By John McKechnie AO, KC
Mr Jayasinga was many things – herbalist, phrenologist, palmist, masseur and confectioner.
One thing Mr Jayasinga was not – a medical practitioner.
So he was skating on thin ice when he examined the hands of a man who had a certain disease and told him he had a bad sickness. Fortunately for the man, Mr Jayasinga held a cure – herbal pills and liquids with occasional vapour baths and massages. All for £25.
The authorities came to hear of the treatment – perhaps the patient thought it was unsuccessful – and Mr Jayasinga found himself before the Fremantle Magistrate.
Here he got a lucky break. The Magistrate acquitted him, reading certain words in brackets in the Medical Act as, well, in brackets.
Wrong! Said the full court quoting Lord Esher. “It is perfectly clear that in an Act of Parliament there are no such things as brackets any more than there are such things as stops.”
Yes, I had trouble with that as well.
Justice Burnside, the second judge agreed with McMillan ACJ although in doing so, he uttered a cri de coeur that would not be out of place in the judgment of a modern Justice of Appeal:
In the limited time at my disposal for considering matters which occupy the attention of this Court, I have come to the conclusion that the Magistrate erred in the opinion at which he arrived on the facts of this case.
So, Mr Jayasinga was sent back to the Magistrate’s Court which was under a direction to convict.
It is possible that Mr Jayasinga forsook his many occupations or perhaps added another because four years later, he was prosecuted again in Fremantle, this time for pretending to tell fortunes.
History does not record whether he predicted this fate.
(adapted from Stephens v Jayasinga (1913) 15 WALR 55)
