'Smith's Village, the squalid little suburb to the northwest of the city, has become quite notorious for ceremonies and festivals of a barbarous and medieval nature. The gospel of the 'modern Messiah' was heard in the Police Court on Thursday, when the audience was given a peep into the doings of a fanatical crowd; yesterday, the ever vigilant Corporal Willacy, who has been doing splendid work in that village, gave the Court spectators the whole modus operandi of 'duppy catchers' and the system described was certainly 'foreign' to that employed by other workers of the black art, which have been exposed to the public from time to time.'
The four accused charged under vagrancy law with being persons pretending to deal in obeah.
Much of Corporal Willacy's evidence is illegible. Spanish Jars, glasses of water, chalk, and other implements of obeah are mentioned. They wanted to take a duppy of a sick woman.
Joseph Francis gives evidence: 'he resided in the yard in which the affair was carried on. A woman in the yard was sick and the defendants said someone had set a ghost on her and they had come to rid her of the evil thing. ... They started by singing and praying which was kept up until about 10 o'clock. At 10.30pm Marshall took three glasses of water and with a chalk he made a circle around them. He then lighted candles and placed between the glasses, speaking the unknown tongue in the meanwhile. This went on until midnight when Agnes Brown ran out of the crowd...