Counsel. "Does the certificate correctly state the time and place and circumstances of your marriage?"
Witness. "I refuse to answer the question on the ground that it would incriminate my wife."
The theory on which the defence was being made was that the witness, Minnock, had manufactured the story which he had printed in the paper, and later swore to before the grand jury and at the trial. The effort in his cross-examination was to show that he was the kind of man who would manufacture such a story and sell it to the newspapers, and afterward, when compelled to do so, swear to it in court.
Counsel next called the witness's attention to many facts tending to show that he had been an eye-witness to adultery in divorce cases, and on both sides of them, first on one side, then on the other, in the same case, and that he had been at one time a private detective. Men whom he had robbed and blackmailed and cheated at cards were called from the audience, one after another, and he was confronted with questions referring to these charges, all of which he denied in the presence of his accusers. The presiding judge having stated to the counsel in the hearing of the witness that although he allowed the witness to be brought face to face with his alleged accusers, yet he would allow no contradictions of the witness on these collateral matters. Minnock's former defiant demeanor immediately returned.
The next interrogatories put to the witness developed the fact that, feigning insanity, he had allowed himself to be taken to Bellevue with the hope of being transferred to Ward's Island, with the intention of finally being discharged as cured, and then writing sensational newspaper articles regarding what he had seen while an inmate of the public insane asylums; that in Bellevue Hospital he had been detected as a malingerer by one of the attending physicians, Dr. Fitch, and had been taken before a police magistrate where he had stated in open court that he had found everything in Bellevue "far better than he had expected to find it," and that he had "no complaint to make and nothing to criticise."
The witness's mind was then taken from the main subject by questions concerning the various conversations had with the different nurses while in the asylum, all of which conversations he denied. The interrogatories were put in such a way as to admit of a "yes" or "no" answer only. Gradually coming nearer to the point desired to be made, the following questions were asked:—
Counsel. "Did the nurse Gordon ask you why you were willing to submit to confinement as an insane patient, and did you reply that you were a newspaper man and under contract with a Sunday paper to write up the methods of the asylum, but that the paper had repudiated the contract?"
Witness. "No."
Counsel. "Or words to that effect?"
Witness. "No."