Sir Drummond Smith of Suttons, Stapleford Tawney, Essex and two of his gamekeepers, Francis Henry Barton and John Woodrow, were summoned at Ongar yesterday for setting a pole trap on an estate at Stanford Rivers. The case against Sir Drummond was dismissed; Woodrow was fined £2 for fixing the trap, and Barton was fined £1 for permitting the trap to be fixed.
The Chairman (Mr H.J. Meyer) hoped that Sir Drummond, in common with other persons who preserved game, would take steps to ensure that these traps were not employed in future. An order was made for the trap to be forfeited.
Mr. O.S. Jenkins, prosecuting for Our Dumb Friends’ League, said that the two investigators of the League saw in a pheasantry in a wood on Sir Drummond’s estate a pole on which was set a trap. The keepers said, “We must protect our birds.” Sir Drummond “treated the matter with hilarity.”
Mr Daniel Ryan, one of the investigators, stated that Sir Drummond said that it was very stupid of the league to prosecute in such cases.
Asked by Mr. S. Wortley, defending, what right he had to trespass on the estate, Mr Ryan said that he required no authority, and quoted a section of the Wild Birds Protection Act, 1896. He added that in any case permission would not be given. He did not know that Sir Drummond subscribed to the funds of the league.
Sir Drummond, in evidence, denied that the trap was set with hi knowledge. He did not know, he said, that they were illegal; otherwise he would have given instructions for them not to be used. He was angry with the league for sending their “detectives sneaking about” his coverts, and suggested that they would be more usefully employed looking after sick animals.
For the defence it was submitted that Woodrow set the trap because pheasants had been killed by owls.
