Upwey is a small village to the north of the seaside town of
Weymouth. In November 1914 it was home to a detachment of the 3rd
Dorset Regiment, tasked with guarding the reservoir that supplied water to the
naval base at Portland. Relatively isolated, the men lived in huts and had a
cookhouse and a mess.
Sunday 29th November was a wet and windy
night, and the off-duty men enjoyed the comforts of the canteen. An argument
broke out and a fight ensued, and the young Corporal Alfred Wilson took his
rifle from his hut and started shooting wildly.
As the officers and NCOs
withdrew to safety, Private Wallace Williams was shot dead and another man
seriously injured. Eventually reinforcements arrived from Weymouth and order
was restored. Wilson and a number of other men were arrested and placed in
military custody.
The following week an inquest was held by the town coroner,
Mr Gustavus Symes, and in giving evidence Wilson admitted shooting Williams.
Symes and the jury felt some sympathy for the young man and he was remanded
until the January Assizes in Dorchester, charged with manslaughter.
But at the Assizes something remarkable happened. The
prosecutor announced that Wilson had been court-martialled on a charge of
mutiny and had been sentenced to six months’ hard labour, and on that basis he
was offering no evidence for the manslaughter charge.
To the dismay of Symes, Wilson was released back
to the army. Mutiny is one of the most serious offences
under military law and carried the death penalty; manslaughter however is a
criminal offence but carried life imprisonment. But the military offence and
conviction appeared to carry greater weight than that of manslaughter.
This
unusual case brought attention to the differences between civil and military
law, and raised the question: which has precedence?
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