MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 61, 14 March 1885, Page 2 (Supplement)

MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

A remarkable case of mistaken identity has recently occurred in Melbourne. A lady staying at the Coffee Palace, about noon on the 17th ult., noticed and spoke to a man who went down a passage which led to her bedroom. On retiring to her room at night she found that her sealskin bag, containiug jewellery and other property, was missing. The missing articles were subsequently pawned by a man who called himself Alfred Charles, who answered the description of the suspected thief given to the police by Mrs. Dudley, the owner of the property. Thirteen days after the theft had been reported the police arrested Mr. J. T. Coulthard, an engineer newly arrived from England, and charged him with the crime. The pawnbroker identified Mr. Coulthard without the slightest hesitation as the man who pawned the articles with him under the name of Charles, and Mrs. Dudley said he resembled the man she bad seen near her room on the 17th ult. It would have gone hard with the prisoner had he not beeD able to establish a perfect alibi. Captain Gill swore positively that on the 17th ulfc. the prisoner was on his ship (the E. J. Spence), and that she did not reach Hobson's Bay till 24 hours after the time at which the robbery was committed. This was corroborated 'by Mr. Henry Welch, and the landlord of the house in which Mr. Coulthard lodged stated that he did not go there until the 19th ult. On hearing this, Mr. Loel, the pawnbroker, changed his mind, and admitted that he had made a mistake. Mr. Coulthard was thereupon discharged, the magistrates expressing their regret for the undeserved inconvenience to which he had been subjected. The police, however, rearrested him for another robbery, committed while he was in Melbourne, but in this, too, he proved a perfectly satisfactory alibi, although one witness positively identified him as the thief.

The amount contributed to the Garfield Monument Fund is £26,800. TT nder British rule there live about 280,000,000 human beings.