SEA GIVES UP DEAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

SEA GIVES UP DEAD.

TONGUES SILENCED. MALICIOUS SLANDER. CAR'S PLUNGE OVER CLIFF. The North Sea has given up its dead, dramatically and unexpectedly, to silence for ever malicious and slanderous tittletattle concerning a young man and a girl. Exactly eleven weeks after the motor car in which the couple were riding plunged over the quayside at Gorles-ton? Norfolk, into the River Yare, the body of the girl. was washed up at Dunwich, 35 miles down the coast. The victims of the tragedy were William Dennis, aged 28, of Rectory Road, Coltishall, Norfolk, and his sister-in-law,,Mies Elsie Smith, aged 18, who lived with a sister at Sussex Road, Gorleston. Miss Smith's body was seen floating near a groyne at Dunwich. It had been so buffeted by winter seas that at first there seemed little hope of identification. j Mother and Gossips.

Following police inquiries, however, Mr. John Dennis, of Sussex Road, Gordeston, a relative, identified the body by a ring. Gossips who have been seeking to besmirch the names of Mr. Dennis and Miss Smith by suggesting that there was nobody in the car when it plunged over the quayside on a dark. November night, and that the couple had planned an elopement, are now silenced.

Driven to distraction by the oftreiterated whispering. of slanderous .tongues, Mrs. Dennis, the mother of William Dennis, offered a reward of £s—a5 —a sum- she could ill spare—for the recovery of the bodies, as the only effective means of refutation.

"These vile rumours made my loss so much harder to bear," Mrs. Dennis told a reporter. "People asked if my boy and Elsie were really dead; if they had eloped. Why, my boy was devoted to his wife, and she was to him. He met Elsie only a few hours before their death. "Will had come from Coltishall for the week-end. We had a family party at my house, and he was to have left for his home on the Sunday night. After L had said I did not feel like going with him in the car, he asked Elsie if she would care to accompany 'him. Cries For Help. "She did so, and it was only about 20 minutes later that we heard that a car had gone.over the quayside." The utterly malicious character of the rumours is made .clear by the story of Mr. Christopher Leggatt, who was a witness of the death plunge of the car. "I heard the occupants cry out as it went over the edge," said Mr. Leggatt. "I ran to the side and saw something floating in a lamp-lit stretch of water. It was the outspread leather coat of the driver. As the coat drifted into the darkness I heard a cry, 'God help us!' and then 'Help, Help!'

"I went 30 yards up the river and took a boathook aboard a drifter in the hope that I might catch the couple as they drifted by. I heard them moaning, but could not reach them."

Mr. Robert George, a watchman, corroborated Mr. Leggatt's story.