THE STUART CASE.

Softcover, 1st Australian edn. The violent rape and murder of little Mary Hattam, on December 20, 1958 in Ceduna, west coast, South Australia, and the subsequent arrest and execution of an aborigine, Rupert Max Stuart for the crime. The effort to identify a murderer grew into a violent and general controversy, and exposed the judicial and political system of South Australia to a scrutiny which was undoubtedly as unpleasant as it was penetrating. Only within a society with some real claim to be called free could such a case arise. To worry about the fate of one obscure man convicted of murder may appear to people living through the history of places like South Africa, an enviable luxury. The line from a police state to Australia is long; but in the Stuart case one was reminded in all conscience that free society is a precarious achievement, dependent as much on the absence of seriously divisive issues as upon allegiance to liberal principles among the holders of office. On a map of the world, the threats to personal freedom in South Australia which arose during the Stuart case were doubtless small; but they were, and still are, worth taking seriously. On several occasions the name of Stuart was compared with that of Alfred Dreyfus. Was there any parallel between the aborigine convicted in Adelaide of murder and the Alsation Jew sent to Devil's Island in 1895 for having betrayed the French Republic? If Stuart was an innocent man picked up because of the colour of his skin and convicted on untrustworthy evidence, and if, when doubts were raised about his guilt, the authorities for a long time refused to exercise clemency or to order a fresh investigation because they believed that to do so might endanger the established order, then the cases would indeed be similar. With Frontis. and a Note on Sources. A5 size, card covers. 321pp. softcover. With previous owner's personal b/plate, small., neat insc. a few mks. on lower cover o/w Vg+.