TRIAL AT CINEMA.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 16 April 1926, Page 8

TRIAL AT CINEMA.

ENGLISH VILLAGE SCENE. YDUTH ADMITS MURDER. In. the only public hall in the village, a quaint box-like building which, in the evenings, is used as a cinema and on certain days as a police court, George Sharpes, aged 20, was recently committed for trail by the Southani, Warwickshire, magistrates on a charge of having murdered Mrs. Milly Crabtree, aged 25, the wife of Mr. A. C. Crabtree, a farmer, of Manor Farm, Ladbroke, on January 13. The magistrates sat before a green baize-covered table just below the screen on which the moving pictures are projected in the evenings,, and only a small space serving as the well of the court, where sat police and legal representatives, separated them from the cinema’s plush-covered filled with villagers. Counsel for the prosecution stated that when in hospital with a throat ■wound, Sharpes wrote and signed a statement which amounted to a confession of the crime.

According to the statement read by counsel, Sharpes said he wished to state ‘‘‘how and why J murdered the deceased,” and added that he struck her several blows < while she was ■working with a hammer in the house. Afterwards he attempted to end his own life by cutting Ms tbroat ,and drinking camphorated oil. Counsel said that there followed certain statements as to why Sharpes said he acted as he did but which he (counsel) must omit from public reading. The statement continued: “On several occasions Mrs. Crabtree told the master things about me, and he would come and grumble at me. If I had had the birch at the beginning all this would not. have happened. lam not writing this to save my life, but to toll you the way I have been wronged.”