LOVER’S DEATH SENTENCE

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 287, 31 August 1935, Page 22

LOVER’S DEATH SENTENCE

Tense Scenes atTrial

A brilliantly-coloured handkerchief was produced in the closing stages of a trial at the Assizes at Durham, England, which resulted in George Hague, 23, unemployed bus-driver, of Cross Fell House, Langley Park, being sentenced to death for the murder of his sweetheart, Amanda Sharpe, 20, employed as a kitchenmaid at Langley Park Isolation Hospital. Hague gave Miss Sharpe the handkerchief as a love token. If ever they parted or wished to part, the handkerchief was to be returned. Following a trivial tiff, Hague tested the strengtli of the token by asking the girl to give him back the handkerchief. She did so and the same night; when she was returning home from a bonfire, which was part of the jubilee day celebrations at Ushaw College, Hague waylaid her and cut her throat. Detailing the circumstances of the tragedy, Mr. J. Willoughby Jardine, K.C., prosecuting, explained that the tiff between Hague and the girl arose over the trifling question of whether Miss Sharpe should go to the bonfire with him or be one of a party of girls who were going from the hospital. Hague was angered over Miss Sharpe’s decision to go with the girls, and be sent her a note. Later he saw the girl at her home and was heard to say, “Have you got what I sent for?” Miss Sharpe replied, “No,” but at once ran upstairs and returned with the handkerchief. This she banded to Hague, who went in tears to the girl’s mother. Hague asked the mother, “Can’t you make it up between Amanda and me?" and Mrs. Sharpe replied, “No. You did It yourself. Go away and leave her alone." Hague went away and, said Mr. Jardine, that evening he seemed to be distressed and depressed. In a drawer at the house where he lived there was

kept a razor, and it was this weapon, the prosecution alleged, Hague put into his pocket and used to commit the mur tier.

Returning from the bonfire celebration in company with another girl named Mary Johnson, Miss Sharpe was confronted by Hague in the drive leading to the hospital. Miss Johnson walked on while Hague and Miss Sharpe had a talk.

Turning round, she saw Hague and Miss Sharpe fall to the ground. Miss Sharpe, it was discovered, had a terrible wound in the throat and died without saying a word. For the defence, witnesses were called to support the plea that at the time Hague, the youngest of a family of 13, conceived the idea of killing his sweetheart, be was of unsound mind. Dr. James W. Astley Cooper, medical superintendent at Middleton Hall Mental Hospital, expressed the view that Hague was of unsound mind at the time of the commission of the crime.

Asked by a member of the jury how he arrived at this conclusion, the doctor replied that Hague’s demeanour since the crime provided the recognised symptoms. For instance, he did not seem to realise what he had done and he behaved as if he had not a care in the world. The doctor went on to say that in his opinion Hague killed the girl when his mind was in a state of complete mental disorganisation and blank chaos.

Dr. Deny, medical officer of Durham Jail, told the court that in his opinion Hague was a healthy man, both physically and mentally.,, The jury was absent three-quarters of an hour before returning the ! r verdict of guilty, and Hague was unmoved by the death sentence. The silence of the court was broken only by the sobbing of the women.