Under the amended law the Governor-in-Council was given power to order the arrest and detention of chiefs when it was deemed expedient to do so for the preservation of peace and order and the suppression of the Human Leopard Society. Power was also given to the Governor-in-Council to deport any such chief from the British sphere of influence in Sierra Leone. The reason for the latter enactment seems to have been that it was considered impossible for the Society to flourish without the connivance of at least some of the chiefs in the part of the territory affected.
It appeared that while some chiefs had been most active in their support of the Government, others had given no assistance or had even put obstruction in the way of investigating charges by refusing to deliver up witnesses and by allowing them to leave the country, with the result that in many cases it was difficult to bring offenders to justice. Prosecutions, however, took place from time to time for offences against the Ordinance, and in a number of cases convictions were obtained on capital charges as well as in lesser offences against the Ordinance.
OBLIVIOUS OF HUMAN ALLIGATORS.
During investigations connected with the offences committed by members of the Human Leopard Society, it came out that another secret society existed known as the Human Alligator Society. This Society appears to have been an offshoot of the Human Leopard Society and the usual meeting-place of this new society was in the vicinity of rivers where crocodiles or as they are called locally alligators abound.
Thereupon the law was further amended in 1901, and it was made a felony for any person without lawful authority or excuse to have in his possession, custody, or under his control an alligator skin shaped or made so as to make a man wearing the same resemble an alligator.
During the year 1903 a Circuit Court, presided over by a judge who sat with assessors, was constituted, and after that date all offences against the Human Leopard and Alligator Society Ordinances were tried by that Court. From that date up to the middle of 1912 there were before the Circuit Court 17 cases, in which 186 persons were charged with murder under the above-mentioned Ordinances; of these persons 87 were convicted and sentenced to death, and in many cases the sentence was duly carried out publicly in the vicinity of the place where the murder was committed.
In July, 1912, a murder took place at Imperri; the murderers were disturbed at their work; a man who was patently concerned in the murder, but was not one of the actual murderers, was arrested; upon this man’s shoulders the murderers threw the whole burden of explanation. Unable to invent even a plausible explanation, he made a clean breast and gave the names of those implicated in the murder. In the course of his explanation other murders were referred to and other names were mentioned, with the result that further arrests were made, whilst other members of the Society whom he named turned King’s evidence. In this way the authorities obtained information with respect to about 30 human leopard murders since 1907, and between 300 and 400 persons, including several paramount chiefs (Mahawas) and a large number of sub-chiefs (Mahawurus), were arrested. As in many cases no corroborative evidence was procurable, the majority of these persons were released, leaving 108, who were committed for trial.
To meet some of the difficulties which had arisen, the Government thereupon brought forward two Bills, one of which extended and strengthened the existing law as to unlawful societies, whilst the other set up a special court for the trial of persons charged with offences connected with unlawful societies, and authorized the deportation of persons who, although acquitted by such court, were, in the opinion of the court, a source of danger to the peace of the district. The Attorney-General, in introducing the first Bill into the Legislative Council of Sierra Leone, said:
“It will be within the knowledge of Honourable Members of this Council that the operations of the Human Leopard Societies in the Protectorate—chiefly in the Northern Sherbro District—have been lately very active.