THE BLOODY BOTTLE.
The first of these was a man named Francis Lane Upton. Upton had not been called at the inquest. The defence had been served with notice that he would be called on the trial, and a short summary of his evidence was given, according to practice. His evidence is remarkable, not so much for its glaring improbability as for the fact that it was dramatically abandoned by the Crown Prosecutor in his closing address to the jury with the contemptuous intimation that he would not ask the jury to “swing a cat on it.” How it has been assessed by the police is shown by the fact that, in the distribution of the reward offered by the Crown, Upton has not shared. That his evidence was prompted wholly by a desire to share in the reward, or gain notoriety, was revealed by his cross-examination. When that is borne in mind, it supplies its own comment on the Crown’s contention that it is incredible that witnesses like Olive Maddox, Ivy Matthews, Sydney Harding, and Joseph Dunstan would have been so wicked as to come forward with false testimony to swear away the life of an innocent man.
The story told by Upton was that he was a labourer out of work, that he had been about the town on December 30, fell asleep in the Flagstaff Gardens, walked through the Victoria Markets “and all round trying to rake up a drink,” and found himself, at about half-past 12 or 1 o’clock, at Ross’s saloon, which he had heard of some months before. By this time he was sober, but very thirsty. Entering the Arcade by the little Collins Street gate, and seeing a light in the saloon, he went to the second door of the establishment—the door nearer Bourke Street. It was not locked, and he pushed it, and it came open. As he did so he heard a woman’s voice saying: “Oh, my God, darling, how are we going to get rid of it?” Just then Ross said: “There is somebody here,” and he rushed out like a lunatic. Upton said to him when he got to the door: “What about a bottle?” Ross had a bar towel or some such thing on his arm, his hands were covered with something that looked like blood; he rushed back, and seized a bottle from behind the bar, thrust it into Upton’s hands, and pushed him from the room, without even waiting to take the money which Upton had ready in his hand. Upton walked down Little Collins Street to Russell Street, where he discovered that there was blood on the bottle. He walked on down Little Collins Street to William Street, thence down to Flinders Street, and at the corner of William Street and Flinders Street he disposed of the bottle (out of which he had had one drink) in what he described as a culvert or sewer.
In cross-examination it was disclosed that Upton had come from the Mallee a day or two before the tragedy. He read of the murder in the Footscray Gardens on the Monday, and he immediately returned to the Mallee, worked in several places, drank the proceeds of his labour, heard about the reward, and, when he was without money, went to the Donald Police Station and told the officer in charge that he “was connected with Alma Tirtschke’s murder.” He was detained, and a detective went up from Melbourne to bring him down. Upton’s evidence may be dismissed with the remark that it was physically impossible for him to have seen from where he said he was the things he said that he did see (for a glance at the plan will show that, from the second door, he could not see the cubicle), and with the further observation that his evidence having been formally repudiated by the Crown, no notice whatever was taken of it in either Court of Appeal. He was a derelict, a drunkard, a wife deserter, a notorious romancer, a convicted criminal, and his evidence was a fitting prologue to that which was immediately to follow.