“It’s ok Maudie, it’s over now, c’mon
I’ll take you home,” Tom said quietly as he crushed her to him in an awkwardly
tight hug. Maud’s sobs escaped in
spluttering squeaks from the embroidered edges of her handkerchief. She fell
against Tom and he led her weaving and stumbling through the long echoing
colonnade of pointed arches decorated with gothic gargoyles, down the broad
staircase of the Supreme Courthouse and out into the November sunshine.
The previous August, Maud had been
rudely and painfully accosted by a large uniformed man while shopping, and the
fine ladies on the High Street that afternoon had gaped and stared at the
spectacle.
“Maud Mary Turnbull, you are under
arrest for performing an unlawful operation upon yourself,” the Policeman had
boomed from under his white pith helmet, his grasp firm on her elbow. Bundled
away to the Police Station, she was ushered along darkened corridors and down
bluestone stairwells into the bowels of the Auckland Gaol, where iron bars and
clanking keys had ensured her security and a sleepless night. The bail hearing the following day added
fear to her humiliation and exhaustion and left her unable to speak. Tom had
quietly gathered her up and taken her home to lie on the daybed in the living
room.
Tom was Maud’s second husband. The first had left her senseless, bloodied
and beaten on more occasions than were countable before she found the courage
to take their children and leave him.
Tom and Maud’s courtship was short. The first baby arrived quickly
before they married in 1900, and the second was born the following year.
In November 1904, three months after
her arrest, the case had made its way to the top of the Supreme Court Criminal
List. Witnesses and accusers alike were
summonsed to attend, each in turn to deliver, hand on heart their truthful
evidence so help them God.
“I think it not appropriate that she
take the stand in her own defence, Mr. Turnbull.” Mr. Martin, the small ruddy faced lawyer
looked across the top of his glasses at them.
“Apart from her emotional state, the
other side has a difficult case to prove.
There is no hard evidence… their case rests on the opinions of
small-town folk,” he said and waved his hands dismissively. Scorn rested
momentarily on his upper lip and Tom frowned. He and Maud were ‘small-town
folk’.
The sunlight streamed at a steep
angle through the narrow Courtroom windows and bit into the gloom. Here Maud’s accuser, Dr. Charles Campbell
Jenkins, the man whose complaint gave this case traction, daubed her with the
wide brush of coarse immorality. He
painted her as a common woman, devoid of femininity and conscience, such that
she could request his assistance to despatch her pre-born infant. A request he
had refused.
“I attended to her on the 15th of May
1904, she was dangerously ill… I found she had used an instrument on
herself.”
“I told Mr. Turnbull there would be
an inquest if she died, and I wouldn’t be able to write a certificate.”
“Did you discuss with Mr. Turnbull
the cause of Mrs. Turnbull’s illness Dr. Jenkins?”
“No, ah no… I assumed Mr. Turnbull
would be…ah… familiar with the details,” he said and flashed a glance towards
Tom.
Tom breathed heavily and glared back,
angered by the Doctor’s smugness and his ugly opinion of Maud.
Mr. Martin jabbed swiftly at the
heart of the good Doctor’s reputation and questioned his ability to accurately
distinguish fact, from those things more likely to have been imagined because
of his close relationship with alcohol. For Maud’s sake, Tom allowed himself a
moment of satisfaction at the Lawyer’s low blow. Dr. Jenkins’ struggle with
temperance was known but ignored and tolerated because of his position.
One after the other witnesses
spoke. Some said she asked for help and
told of medications and hot baths, another recalled Maud said she had
accomplished the deed herself. Then
those with no knowledge of a baby, apart from overheard gossip, had formed the
view that Maud was crazy. They
recounted their stories with relish and drew wild word pictures to add
substance to their claims.
“She told me she had drowned some relative or
other in the lagoon beyond the town.”
“I thought she was off her head.”
“Her head was so bad she didn’t know
what she was saying.”
Maud had sat timorous and wide-eyed,
while Tom raged in silence. Do they not have any compassion?! Dragging up every private thing she ever said
and making up stories to satisfy their own narrow minds! The Bastards!
In contrast, there was other evidence
from those closer to Maud, those who knew nothing of a pregnancy wanted or
otherwise, nor of anything resembling an instrument with which the problem
could have been eviscerated.
“I never noticed her to be strange in
her manner.”
“Perfectly sensible.”
The report of the medical experts
recorded Maud as mixed in her emotions, and she found it difficult to give a
cohesive account of herself. Nothing in their examination showed an illegal operation
had been performed.
Tom was hopeful when Justice Edwards
in his summing up declared the proceedings had been very irregular, and
addressed the prosecution sternly, saying,
“Counsel, your witnesses appear to
have been somewhat rehearsed.”
The ‘not guilty’ verdict was
delivered within the hour, and the newspaper headline read ‘A Sufferer from
Delusions’. Tom threw the newspaper away.
“It should say Innocent!” he fumed.
Tom regarded Maud carefully as they
sat in silence on the veranda watching the sunset, and he thought about the
ways he could return normality to their lives.
Time and peace would do most of the work and she would come good, he
knew it. He reached across the gap between them and
squeezed her hand and she smiled back at him.
“We’ll be ok Lovie,” he said.
