ARREST OF FREEMAN KITCHEN.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8482, 13 May 1893, Page 9

ARREST OF FREEMAN KITCHEN.

(press association telegram.) INVEROARGILL, May 12. William Freeman Kitchen was arrested to-day on the Manapouri at the Bluff, bound to Melbourne, by Detective Maddern. He was carefully got up as a sunburnt country man in shabby attire, and had used cosmetic freely to alter the cut of his eyebrows, which were dyed red. The detective was not sure of his man, but determined to risk arrest. Kitchen at first denied his identity, and said he was from Henley, in the Taieri district, but he owned up on the way to town ou the train. He hod a bottle of chloroform and a pot of face paint in his possession. He says he walked to Mosgiel, where he took the train to Invercargill, and that he had been two days at the Bluff. The police doubt this tale, being of opinion that he left the train near Inveroarg-1, avoided the town, and walked to the port.

Kitchen is Well known in "Wellington, his own family and that of his wife having lived there for many years. The news of his supposed death (says the Post) reached I his relatives some weeks ago. It was conveyed in a letter purporting to be written by the landlady of the house in which he had died, but contained some singular discrepancies that caused suspicion to be aroused. Soon after this anonymous telegrams—the authorship of which has not yet been traced—began to come from somebody in Melbourne, hinting that Kitchen was still in the land of the living, but had assumed a new name, ana entered upon an altogether new kind of life, and launched into an altogether unexpected partnership, for which the law might yet make him answerable. It should be stated that when he left New Zealand it was with the intention of establishing a new labour journal in Melbourne, but that his scheme failed, and b—ing unable to get other journalistic employment he took to the business of a theatrical agent many months ago, and was engaged in it at the time of his supposed death. On the receipt of the mysterious communications, the relatives caused enquiiies to be made through friends resident in Hobart and Melbourne. The result was that cable messages were received on Monday night from two different quarters, stating that the report as to Kitchen's death was a hoax, and that he had taken the name of Temple Vane, and was now believed to be in New Zealand as agent for a concert company—that of tiie Misses Albu, now performing in the southern towns. Coincidently there came telegraphic enquiries from Dunedin as to whether the Kitchen family had any relative named Temple Vane, aperson giving that name, and resembling W. F. X., having made .his appearance there. The reason for these enquiries, and the eequel thereto, te evident from the above telegram. It is probable that other complications, of a domestic' kind, will ensue, Mr* Kitchen's relatives having, as the result of their enquiries, instituted proceedings here.