LOVE TRAGEDY

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 November 1923, Page 7

LOVE TRAGEDY

AN OFFICER’S SUICIDE. A dramatic story of a young officer’s infatuation for a beautiful girl lies behind a shooting tragedy in a Kensington flat. Claud Bucknell, aged 31, a lieutenant in the R.A.F., stationed at Uxbridge, was found dead in the drawing room at.lverna Gardens, a second floor flat occupied by a well-to-do couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Frank Chapman, and their daughter Eve. Lieutenant Bucknell called at the flat about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, and, it was understood, made a proposal of marriage to Miss Chapman, a tall fair-haired and strikingly pretty girl, whom he had known for some time. Miss Chapman, it was stated, rejected his proposal, and a moment later the young man pulled out a revolver and shot himself through the heart. The porter of the flat was hurriedly dispatched for a doctor, who arrived within a few minutes, but the officer was found to be dead. He had shot himself in the region of the heart with a Service revolver, which was found on the floor. A pathetic feature of the tragedy is that Lieutenant Bucknell’s mother, who lives at Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, is l an invalid.

Mr. and Mrs. Chapman and their daughter have been living in Iverna Gardens for a little more than two months* Although Miss Chapman has been unable to give a really coherent account of the tragedy, something of what happened has been learnt from her. The lieutenant she said, had come to say good-bye. He was sitting on the couch and she was standing by the fireplace when the shot was fired. “I had not the slightest idea,” ’Miss Chapman added, “that the thing was going to happen.”

Miss Chapman had known Lieutenant Bucknell about * three months. Occasionally they went out together, and some correspondence passed between them, but so far as is known there was nothing in any of the lieutenant’s letters to indicate that he contemplated taking his life. Mr. Chapman, seen by a “Daily Chronicle” representative, said he preferred to say 'nothing about the affair for the present. “It is> very tragic,” he said, “and naturally we are all very upset. We had no idea that anything of the kind might happen. I don’t want to say anything more until the news had been broken to the mother.”