LONDON MYSTERY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 3 April 1925, Page 7

LONDON MYSTERY.

COOKE’S CAREER

POET AND INVENTOR. FOSTER A NE’ERcRO-WELL. BY CABLE—PHESa ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT , Received April 3, 12.49 p.m. LONDON, April 2. Overnight enquiries reveal, that Granville Cooke, aged fifty, who was found dead in Cooke’s school of anatomy, had had a most remarkable career. He was educated at Bonn University, and was a poet and an inventor, fie was sentenced in 1921 for converting to his own use, money obtained for Saint Biistan’s Blind Institute, from the sale of copies of his poem, “Cry Not .Farewell,” for which Cooke received a letter of acceptance from Queen Alexandra. Foster was the son of a prosperous Ratley wool merchant. He came to London, .raised money on the reversion of his father’s estate, mixed with low company, gambled on horse races, drank heavily, lived riotously with women in the West End. He gave Cooke power of attorney over his affairs. Foster’s widowed mother lives at Scarborough and ha.d not heard from her ne’er-do-well son for weeks, till the news came of his mysterious death. — Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.

DETAILED POLICE SEARCH

MORE ABOUT THE TWO MEN

Received April 3, 1.25 a.m. LONDON, April 2

Police searched the mystery house throughout the night, taking up floors and removing piles of documents. Today a strong ‘force of police was needed to keep out the crowds of sightseers. Horne Office experts are conducting tests to decide the manner of -Foster’s death. » Neighbours reveal that Cooke occasionally broke out in an ungovernable temper. Twice weekly he visited a school of boxing in the West End, where he declared he had found a “white hope/’ , There he associated with a gang of forgers, after which he joined Foster in the. West End. The. pair, accompanied by a woman, return ad to the mystery lionse in the' small hours of the morning, where, a noisy revelry continued till the Coqke often spent whole days writing poems and experimenting in a well equipped chemical laboratory. Cooke’s widow, aged twenty-six I ', who left him a few months ago, visited the mystery house to-day. [Cooke and Foster were found dead in a room at the old school of anatomy, founded by the former’s father. The roofn was'full of gas. The opinion was held bv the police that one man had died of poison and the other had died from the effects of the gas. -The affair is shrouded in mystery, which Was further intensified by the reticence of the police and their actions in digging in the garden of a cottage.]