BRUTAL ASSAULT

Evening Star, Issue 22595, 12 March 1937, Page 11

BRUTAL ASSAULT

YOUNB MAN S GRIME GIRL STRUCK WHILE ASLEEP After an amazing statement had been read at pournemouth, England, a young hotel porter was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for brutally assauling a chambermaid employed at the same hhtel. Addressing the youth, Harold George Morgan, aged 18, a native of South Wales, employed at the Boscobel Hall Hotel, Bournemouth, the Chairman of the Bench, Mrs Grimes, declared: “ You have made a cowardly, brutal assault on a young woman. It must he brought homd to you.” / Morgan pleaded guilty to a charge of having unlawfully and maliciously wounded Mabel Reeves. BLEEDING BADLY. Detective-inspecor Carter said that Morgan' and Miss Reeves occupied bedrooms oh the ground floor of the hotel. Miss Reeves went to bed about .11.30 and the next thing she remembered was getting a heavy blow on the head. She screamed, and, although dazed, managed to reach the bedroom of hep employer at the top of the house, bleeding badly from a severe wound in the head. After inquiries among the hotel staff, Morgan, who at first strongly denied knowledge of the affair, was detained, and later offered to make a statement. The statement read: “ I have had several tiffs with Mabel ever since I have worked here. I haven’t hit her before because she is a girl. “ This morning I woke up about, a quarter past 6, and lay in bed thinking over the way she had treated me while I have been here. I got up, put on my trousers and shirt, and went into the kitchen. There I took up an iron window-Weight, and went to her bedroom. “ She was asleep in bed, with her head turned towards the wall. I hit her on the head with the weight. She cried out ‘ Dh! ’ and I ran out of the room to my own bedroom, had a wash, finished dressing, and then went into the kitchen and got on with my work. FIT OF TEMPER. “ This was done in a fit of temper, and I am unable to account why I did it. “ I am very sorry it happened, bub the tiffs we had worried me, and I thought she was up against me.” The inspector went on to say that Morgan then took him into the kitchen and handed him an iron bar, saying: “ That is what I hit her with.” Dr Harold Simmons, police surgeon, said there was a deep contused wound on the woman's scalp, above the right ear. There was considerable bruising and evidently it had been caused by a considerable blow. Am X-ray, however, showed there was no injury to the skull, and she was now out of danger. Asked if he had anything to say to the Court, Morgan repeated that it happened in a fit of temper. “ This ia the first time I have flown into a temper,” he added. Superintendent Deacon told the court that after leaving school at the age of 14, Morgan got a job as a page boy at Bexhill-on-Sea. Following this, he was a theatre attendant at Ilfracombe, and in April of last year got a situation at the Boscobel Hall Hotel. There were no previous convictions against him.