Welsh Journals

THE STRANGE CASE OF A WARTIME PIG AND A JUDICIAL ENQUIRY INTO THE CONDUCT OF A CARDIGANSHIRE BENCH1 'These two stated cases', said Lord Chief Justice Goddard on 12 December 1946 in the King's Bench Divisional Court sitting at the Law Courts in the Strand, 'disclose a state of affairs which appears to me to be as shocking as I have come across for a very long time'.2 Just over nine months earlier, on 24 April 1946, the Aberaeron3 Magistrates had dismissed two informations brought against William Herbert Lewis for contravening wartime regulations restricting and controlling the slaughter of farm live- stock. In respect of a ten month old pig, which had been slaughtered at Lewis's farm in Llanarth on 19 November 1945, the first information alleged that he had made a false statement in an application for the slaughter of the animal by wrongly representing that for the previous three months the pig had been owned by J. G. Angus, a bailiff at the farm. The second summons alleged that Lewis had, contrary to regulations, slaughtered the pig other than under the terms of a properly issued licence. On 24 April 1946, in the Georgian-style surroundings of the first floor court room at the County Hall, Aberaeron, in a prosecution brought by the Ministry of Food and its Divisional Enforcement Officer, John Robert James, and conducted by Kenneth Davies of the Treasury Solicitors Department, the magistrates, after some initial submissions as to whether they should hear the case, decided to proceed. At the close of the prosecution case, as was perfectly permissible, Lewis's solicitor, Mr Jessop of Aberystwyth, submitted that there was no case to answer and that both informations should be dismissed. The mag- istrates retired to consider the submission and invited Eyton Morgan, an Aberystwyth solicitor and Clerk to the Aberystwyth Justices who was acting as deputy clerk that day, to retire with them. After they had deliberated, they returned into court and announced that the submission was upheld. With regard to the first charge, they found that no false statement had been made on the application form to slaughter the pig and the case was dismissed. Further, there was no case to answer on the second charge of slaughtering the pig otherwise than under the terms of a properly issued licence. Lewis left the court, no doubt relieved at the result, but the prosec- utor, as he made his way back to London, was left to ponder the surprising outcome of the prosecution, which, in his view, flew in the face of the evi- dence. On his advice, an appeal against the decision of the magistrates was made by way of case stated to the Divisional Court, that is the magistrates I