Murder Of Natives
p. 36 · Read in the full issue
Trial of Ludwig Schmidt
T UDWIG SCHMIDT, who has been sentenced to death in New Guinea for wantonly murdering natives, is a thin sallow-faced man with a scraggy beard, and is aged about forty-five years. He was born in Vienna of a Bavarian father and an Austrian mother. He spent five years in U.S.A., five years in Australia, and five years prospecting in New Guinea.
He has a wife and family in Australia.
The murders were committed in 1934, while Schmidt, Hellmuth Schultze, John J.
A. King and Groos were on a prospecting trip on one of the tributaries of the Sepik River. They seem to have behaved lik;wild beasts —especially in their treatment of the natives. They fired at the natives without provocation; and they seized and raped the native women. Stories of these outrages trickled through to Sydney. The N.G. Administration must be commended for the thoroughness with which it dealt with the matter.
At one of the camps of this party, Schmidt suspected that two natives had followed the party from another village, for the purpose of warning the local na tives against the methods adopted by Schmidt and his friends in regard to shoot ing pigs and securing women. Schmidt fired at one of these natives with a revol ver and at the other with a rifle, and he killed the latter!
Evidence for the Crown was given both by King and Schultze (prisoners serving sentence in Rabaul gaol), as well as by a number of native witnesses who were car riers and servants. King and Schultze had been convicted of offences arising out of the same set of circumstances —King got 10 years' imprisonment for shooting at the natives with a rifle, and Schultze got seven years’ for abducting a native woman.
Groos returned to Germany before the charges were brought.
There was difficulty at Schmidt’s trial because he had made no provision for de fending himself, and he did not speak Eng lish well. Eventually, the Judge postponed the trial until the accused man could be provided with an interpreter and with counsel —both supplied at Government cost.