BIRDS IN MURDER MYSTERIES

Cromwell Argus, Volume L, Issue 2645, 20 October 1919, Page 7

BIRDS IN MURDER MYSTERIES

HOW TPIEY HAVE AIDED JUSTICE Few readers, probably, of Mr. Eden Phillpotts’s “Sam of Sorrow Ccrner” know that the main incident on which the plot of the story is based —the discovery of the murder of a little girl through the finding of some of her hair in a bird’s nest—is taken from real life. The tragedy happened in Devonshire, many years ago, but the memory of it still lingers amongst the peasantry there ; and Mr. Phillpotts has merely reproduced the essential details in the form of fiction. Nor is the- above the only case where birds have unwittingly aided justice. Not many years since, there occurred near Vienna a murder that for diabolical cunning and ingenuity is probably unparalleled in the annals of crime. Several members of a family of agriculturists named Szenzi died after eating mushrooms gathered from their own private bed. At first it was considered to be a case of ordinary ptomaine poisoning, but a day or two later some fowls that had been scratching and pecking about the mushroom bed also died mysteriously. This coincidence aroused suspicion, and investigation showed that a certain poisonous fungus, closely resembling mushrooms in appearance, had been planted there.

The deed was traced to a neighbour named Frenschi, whose daughter, Pauline, was a servant in the Szenzi household, the crime having its origin in a love affair between the girl and one of her employer’s sons. The latter had jilted the girl, and her father took this unique and terrible method in order to be revenged for the slight put upon his daughter. Fowls also played an important part in securing the conviction of another poisoner, Richard Brinkley, who murdered two people in 1907 by giving them stout in which he had previously placed a quantity of prussic acid. The defence pleaded that the affair was an accident, but the prosecution proved that Brinkley had previously experimented on chickens with the same poison, first dosing the birds, and then dissecting their bodies in order to find out the effects of the poison on their internal organs. He was found guilty and duly hanged. A canary was the means of bringing to justice a Frenchman named Frcycinet, who murdered his sweetheart by mixing morphia with her coffee. While the girl was lying unconscious, he plastered up the crevices in the window with brown papar ; then he turned the gas full on, and left the room. After a brief interval—too brief as it turned out—he called her maid, saying he had just returned and had found the room full of gas, and “madame’’ lying on the bed, apparently dead. “She has committed suicide by ppisoning herself with coal gas,” he said. “In that case,” retorted the maid, “it is strange that madame's canary is not dead also,” and she pointed to the bird, which, although evidently distressed, was hopping and fluttering about its cage near the window, which by now Freycinet had thrown open. In a moment the murderer realised his mistake —a mistake that was presently to cost him his life.

Dentist ; “You say this tooth has never been worked on before. That’s queer, for I find small flakes of gold on my instrument.” Victim ’ “You have struck my back collar-stud, I guess.”