DEATH OF ACTRESS AT SEA

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 68, Issue 137, 22 March 1948, Page 3

DEATH OF ACTRESS AT SEA

STEWARD’S EVIDENCE OF SEIZURE J LONDON, March 20. James Camb, aged 30, a deck steward, was cross-examined for two hours at the Winchester Assizes, where he was charged with murdering the actress, Gay Gibson, aged 21, on November 18, during the voyage of the liner Durban Castle from South Africa to England. Camb maintained that Miss Gibson had a seizure in her cabin during intercourse and that he did no violence to her. Believing her dead and being panicky, he pushed her body through the porthole. “ I am ashamed. It was beastly conduct,” he said, at the end of his cross-examina-tion. A defence witness, Evelyn Joan Armour, of London, a friend of Miss Gibson’s in 1946 when both were members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, said one night she found Miss Gibson in bed, apparently choking, with her hands clutching her chest. Miss Gibson was removed in an ambulance. Miss Gibson later told her she had had earlier a similar seizure. Peter Arthur Dnlby, a former soldier, who had acted Avith Miss Gibson* said she was hysterical, excitable, and neurotic. She had once fallen from a chair in some kind of hysterical fit, screaming and moaning. Henry Gilbert, an actor and producer, said that when he first met Miss Gibson she Avas a charming young lady; but during production of “Golden Boy” she shoAved temperament of a peculiar type. She was often distraught and highly strung. She once fainted Avhile walking in a Johannesburg street with him. Gilbert said Miss Gibson Avas perturbed about sex. A pathologist, F. D. Hocking, said that from the medical aspect, Camb’s story Avas perfectly possible. The Court adjourned till Monday.