Friday, May 5th, 1967,
BOY WITNESSES WERE ‘LYING’
HEAD DENIES DICTATORSHIP
William Michael Byrd, aged 38, the headmaster of a private boarding school near Salisbury, Wiltshire, denied at Hampshire Assizes at Winchester yesterday that he was “very much a dictator” in the school.
He also denied saying to a boy:
“There is one God up there and there is me, and you are in my power and under my mercy and I can do what I like.”
At one point Mr. Byrd was asked by counsel for the prosecution: “All these boys, you would suggest, had their reasons for lying in court – they must by lying?”
Mr. Byrd replied: “Substantially, yes, Sir.”