MURDER AND ROMANCE

Evening Star, Issue 19006, 30 July 1925, Page 9

MURDER AND ROMANCE

POOR LAW OFFICER'S TALES,

WOMEN WITH DELUSIONS.

Stories of a. murderer, of foreign court intrigue, and of mysterious exiles are told by Mr William Webster, one of the senior relieving officers of Derby, who ha# retired after long service.

Once he was startled by a man in his office, who quietly declared that he was the first person the lae Mr Justice Hawkins had sentenced to death. Tho extreme penalty had not been exacted, and after twenty years’, imprisonment, ha was released. But liberty was misery. Prison had become the mauls world, and lie found no use for freedom.

Mr Webster was called upon to relieve the distress of a lady who labored upder the delusion that she was descended from Thomas a Beckct. She had lived in Austria, where her association with men of Royal blood threatened serious international complications, and the lady was escorted from the country. Another woman claimed to be a Bourbon, but no confirmation was ever obtained.

Assisted by a diminutive curate, Mr Webster once convoyed a mental patient, who was over 6ft in height, to an asylum. They were exhausted by their efforts to keep him in tho cab, but eventually the patient , promised to behave if lie were allowed to drive. The six-foot patient and the little cleric then sat on the box, while Mr Webster and the cabby rode inside. Thus they arrived at the‘asylum, vasa slullu cmlwyp shrdl hd hrd hr hh