REMARKABLE CHARGE OF ABDUCTION.

Evening Post, Volume XXI, Issue 94, 23 April 1881, Page 4

REMARKABLE CHARGE OF ABDUCTION.

At the Exeter Police Court recently, Cuthbert Granville was charged with abducting Kate Green, a girl under sixteen years of age. Miss Green said she first made the prisoner's acquaintance about six weeks ago. He represented himself to be Lieutenant Cnthbert Granville, of the 14th Hnssars, home from India on sick leave. After paying 1 his addresses to her for a few days he offered her marriage, and on questioning him as to his means, he said he had £500 a year from his father. Early in November he persuaded her to leave Exeter with him,, but her friends found them at Taunton and took her back. On the 26th November the prisoner again sought an interview with her, and asked her to go to London to be married, stating that he had had legal advice, and would be able to marry her if he pretended Bhe was an orphan. She at first declined to go with him, but he began talking about pistols and pruasio acid, and this so alarmed her that she at last consented. They spent the night in a lodging-house in St. Thomas, occupying separate bedrooms. The same evening xh'e prisoner sent a poat-oard to her father. She did not see what he wrote, but saw him post it. Its contents were as follows : — " Oh, fools of little faith ! Let those laugh who that lose ; those that win will be sure to laugh. By the ijme yon get this we shall be 160 mflesawayfrpm here."— Gbanvilli. On the following day they walked to Stoke Canon and took a train to Tiverton, where they remained at an hotel until 30th November. They next walked to Burlescombe, and took a train for Welllington. On the following evening Granville was arrested. To prevent suspicion at the hotels, Ac, he represented that they were brother and sister. Miss Green added that the prisoner threatened that if she attempted to go home she Bhould not do so alive, and that if her parents took her away it should be as a corpse. He also tried to prevent her writing. When the prisoner was arrested, he refused to give his real name. Captain Bent, chief constable of Exeter, told the prisoner he had reason to believe that he had tried to obtain admission to the Devon and Exeter Club as Lieutenant English, 24th Hnssars, but his only reply was, " For the present I'm Granville." Two letters addressed to the girl's father were found upon the prisoner, in one of which he stated that any attempt to get hia daughter home again would be waste of time, for he waß resolved that only death should separate them. The prisoner made a long statement to the effect that Miss Green was a consenting party. When her parents took her away from him at Taunton, he bought some prussio acid to poison himself with, but lost the bottle. He then went to a gunsmith's to buy a pistol, but did not succeed. He confessed having contemplated poisoning some medicine the mil was taking. The Bench committed him for trial at the assizes. r