FOUND SHOT DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 14

FOUND SHOT DEAD

AUSTRALIAN IN ENGLAND

EXPLANATORY THEORIES

Cnitcd Tress Association—By Electric Tel«-

graph—Copyright.

(Received February 4, 2.30 p.m.)

LONDON, February 3.

A man who was found shot dead in a creek of! Chichester Harbour, a mile from his abandoned motor-car, is stated by the "Daily Mail" to be Bernard Arthur Algar Hamill, aged 40, a retired commissioned officer of the Australian Navy, who came to England from Australia in July, leaving his wife and two children behind.

The car was first noticed by a woman, who saw lying in it a snapshot of a woman and three children. She recognised the woman as Miss Catliff, who stayed in the district during the summer with her brother's 'children. She remembered also seeing the car, and knew it belonged to Hamill, who was the children's uncle. The police faced the problem of Hamill driving 250 miles from Liverpool, where he had been living, leaving Ihe car, and disappearing, but after a long search the body was found.

It is learned that. Miss Catliff became engaged, whereupon Hamill sent her a congratulatory telegram.

The "Daily Mail" suggests that loneliness because his wife and children were absent, unhappiness over a friendship which he feared he had lost, and worry over a business into which he had put his life savings may be among the causes of the tragedy.

A Liverpool friend of Hamill says it was a hard blow to him to leave his wife and children behind, but he wished his children to continue their education. He was proud of them and carried their photographs in his pocket