James Scobie - Trial

Trial

At the trial at the Supreme Court in Melbourne, a doctor provided the following evidence as published in Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer.

Dr John Alfred Carr-I am a medical practitioner ; I was called by the witness Carmichael, to attend upon James Scobie between one and two o'clock on the morning of Saturday, 7th October; I found him about fifty or sixty yards from the hotel, lying on the ground perfectly insensible; I had him removed to Bentley's hotel. There I re-examined him; he was quite dead; I have no hesitation in saying he was quite dead when l first saw him; I could detect no trace of life when I first saw him; but he was very warm, and I thought I would try what was to be done; I afterwards made a post mortem examination, by direction of the Coroner; I made these notes referring to a note-book in witness's hand) within half an hour of making the post mortem; I found bruises on the body; a bruise on the left collar bone; a severe bruise over the lips, especially the upper lip; another over the right cheek, and a graze therefrom on the right eyebrow; one on the lower part of the right upper eyelid ; and a slight bruise and graze on the right side of the nose near the junction with the cheek and close to the eye. There were two slight bruises, one on the head above the right temple, which I did not discover at the first observation, and the other at the back of the head; there was an unimportant external mark on the right shoulder; I had examined the body the night before; there was some blood, which had flown both from the wound on the nose and the graze on the cheek; the internal examination of the body showed that the vessels on the brain were congested ; there was a solid clot of arterial blood on the left side of the brain, extending into the ventricles and convolutions of the brain, and which appeared to be produced from the rupture of one or more branches of tho internal carotid artery shortly after it enters tho brain ; that rupture was caused by a blow; the viscera were perfectly healthy, and the heart especially so; there was a very strong colour of spirits from the stomach, which was frightfully loaded with a mass of undigested and unmasticatcd food; the state of his stomach would account for the deceased having met his death from a blow, which, under ordinary circumstances, would have inflicted no serious injury upon him. Any of the blows which caused the bruises may have caused the rupture of the vessels, and so produced death from the shock thus given to the system; the bruise on the back of the head was probably from a fall; I think the man must have died as instantaneously as if he had been shot in the heart. If he had survived a few minutes, there would have been a stertorous breathing; it would appear that the deceased died of sanguineous apoplexy; he was lying within about forty or fifty yards of my dwelling; I had heard a disturbance at Bentley's hotel about three quarters of an hour previously; I had not unfrequently heard similar noises at Bentley's; a spade was shown to me at the inquest; it was a square spade with sharp edges; my opinion is that the spade could not have inflicted any of the wounds except the most trifling; it is extremely improbable that any of the wounds could have been inflicted by that spade unless it were one at the side of the head, which was so slight that I only detected it on dissecting back the scalp; I examined tho skull very carefully; there was no appearance of a fracture there; I remember seeing Martin the same night; he appeared very stupid and drunk; Martin had two bruises on him, one on the left temple and one on the forehead; it was a severe blow on the temple; I was at the inquest, but did not hear all the evidence, as I was engaged during part of the time making the post mortem examination.