When the witness took the stand again, she asserted that she fainted because she saw a man in court whom she thought was the person who assaulted her in February, 1920, in a toilet in the Quincy lodging house where she had rooms.
Her testimony was impeached by five defense witnesses. The most important of these was Mrs. Julia Campbell, who accompanied Mrs. Andrews to South Braintree that day, and gave testimony directly opposite.
An elderly but active woman, Mrs. Campbell had come from Maine to testify for the defense after a state detective had told her she needn’t go to Massachusetts to testify; that she didn’t know anything of importance; and that it would cost too much to have her make the trip.
She submitted to an eyesight test in court at the hands of District Attorney Katzmann, and proved that she was able to distinguish objects and colors at long distance; one instance was her specifying the color of a hat picked at random among the audience. And she had been working in the shoe factories as a stitcher, at a task which requires unerring vision.
“Neither of us spoke to the man under the automobile,” declared Mrs. Campbell. “Mrs. Andrews did not speak to either man. It was I who addressed the inquiry about how to get into the Rice and Hutchins’ factory. But I spoke to the man standing in the rear of the car, not to the man underneath.”
Why did Mrs. Andrews faint in court? Harry Kurlansky, a Quincy tailor, testified that she told him she fainted because the defense was digging into her past history, and that she was afraid the lawyers would “bring out the trouble she had with Mr. Landers.” Landers was a naval officer, Kurlansky said.
She told him also, Kurlansky stated, that she couldn’t identify the men at Braintree. The police wanted her to identify some one in Dedham jail as one of the men she saw in Braintree, but she couldn’t because she didn’t get a good look at the faces of those men. Kurlansky volunteered to testify for the defense after reading in newspapers of the “identification” she swore to in court.
Policeman George Fay of Quincy testified that he interviewed Mrs. Andrews in February, 1920, in connection with the alleged assault upon her. Did she suppose that attack had anything to do with the South Braintree affair? She answered that she could not identify the men she saw in Braintree as she didn’t get a good look at them.
Alfred La Brecque, Quincy reporter and secretary of the Chamber of Commerce there, said she told him the same thing.
Miss Lena Allen, rooming house proprietor, testified that Mrs. Andrews’ reputation for truth and veracity was bad, and that she would never want her in her house again.