OUTRAGEOUS CRUELTY

Evening Star, Issue 17957, 2 May 1922, Page 6

OUTRAGEOUS CRUELTY

A GIRL'S DEATH. CORONER'S COMMENTS. “ Fortunately, such examples of cruelty seldom come before a court. ... It is utterly disgraceful to this young man. . . . A more absolutely callous piece of cruelty I have never even heard of be- , fore. It is an outrageous thing indeed.” These comments were made hy the Acting i City Coroner, Mr at Sydney on , April 22, after an inquiry into the death of , Mabel Eugenic Tomkins, twenty-four, a mar- ( ried woman, at St. Vincent's Hospital, on . April 12, and were directed towards a wit- ; ness, a young man, Frank William Bussell. ‘ “YOU ARE BETTER. DEAD.” j The story told to the coroner by the girl’s i mother, Mrs Minnie Josephine Gronow, was , that her daughter was living apart from her j husband in a flat in Darlinghurst road (says the ‘Daily Telegraph'). A few days prior ' to her admission to St. Vincent's, witness ■ visited her daughter, and found her very 1 ill. In reply to questions, the girl had 1 said: "I took poison. Bussell stood over . me, and demanded that I take it, saying, : ■ 'lake tho damned things. Xou are better ( dead.’ ’* , "Ho lay on the bod reading tho paper j while I was dying,” the told witness. j Tho poison her daughter had taken was contained in pills, which she told witness, she found in tho flat and look, expecting im- 1 mediate death. * Witness, in reply to further questions by 1 the coroner, said that it was on tho day of : her death that her daughter told her of i Bussell. Previously she said,she had taken ] tho pills in mistake. Witness had not told ; tho police about Bussell or the other things , her daughter had told her when she was “I wanted to shield her memory,” added ! the mother. “I didn't like to tell tho police , the truth.” : “ I have found out in the last day or two 1 that Bussell has my daughter's property,” witness added, "itc will not give it to i mo. Ho has her jewellery and the keys of : i her box. I went to his mother and sister, ; ' and demanded them, and they threatened to give mo in charge.” I SAID HE DIDN'T CARE, ; At' tho hospital witness interviewed Buscell, and said; “Jack, 1 want to know tho ■ truth.” “ [ don't care a danm,” replied Bus- ( sell. “Let her husband bury her,” ho added, when witness asked him what funeral arrangements he intended to make. Questioned by Bussell, Mrs Gronow said: ’ “You emptied out her purse and took every halfpenny sho had. My daughter told me that.” 1 In reply to tho coroner, witness said that : the hut-band eventually buried the wife. Tho i three children of tho marriage were in the husband’s custody. THE MAN'S VERSION. Frank William Bussell, a chairmaker, living in Station street, Enmorc, said that ho had known the deceased for about two years, and had visited her at her flat. On, tho Sunday on which sho took ill ho had gone to her flat during the afternoon at ’about ! i 2 o’clock. Ho found her in bed. Sho told ; ] him that she had taken the poisonous pills in . . I mistake for some cough lozenges which sho j had in hor room. Ho offered to get a doctor, : but she declined, saying sho “ would be all . right.” Sho seemed-in a weak condition,,, and ho left at about 9 o’clock that night, :■ , and just before ho left sho told him that 1 ( she felt a little bettor. He know that the < girl had pawned some of her jewellery. It : was not in his 'possession. Ho denied that 1 the mother had spoken to him in reference • to ‘paying for the funeral. She. had not ■, taxed him at the hospital with tho aociisa- ' lions she had made in court. After further evidence, tho -coroner re- , corded a finding of death from poison self- j ( i administered. Tho evidence adduced did not j enable him to vfotermino whether tho girl's : notion was accidental or wilful. The coroner , dded that Bussell's callous- : ness in sitting there while the woman, with whom hia relations were what they were, was dying, and doing nothing whatsoever to ravo her ’litej almost gassea_bdiefy