SHOREDITCH MURDER TRIAL OF STARCHFIELD

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 77, 1 April 1914, Page 7

SHOREDITCH MURDER TRIAL OF STARCHFIELD

EXTRAORDINARY INTEREST. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.) (Received April 1. 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, 31st March. Extraordinary interest is being taken in Starchfield's trial at the Old Bailey. Mr. Bodkin, K.C., who is prosecuting, submitted that it was practicable that the body was not noticed during the four and a half journeys made by the train after the witnesses' alleged meetings with Starchfield over two hours previously. The Crown's theory was that the jolting of the train slowly dislodged the body. Cross-examination by the counsel for the defence suggests that the case is one of mistaken identity, perhaps as the result of seeing the newspaper photographs. [Starchfield is charged with the mur* der of his seven-year-old son, who was found strangled under the seat of a railway carnage at Shoreditch. A woman identified Starchfield as the man she saw leading a boy by the hand to the Camden Town Railway Station. A signalman gave evidence that he saw a man kneeling over a child in the train on the afternoon the murder was committed. An engine-driver said he saw a man apparently tying a parcel in the compartment where the body was found 1 . The body was subsequently found by a passenger, who noticed the child's hand protruding beneath the seat.]