WEDDING DAY TRAGEDY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 15 May 1928, Page 3

WEDDING DAY TRAGEDY.

Bit IDE WAITS IN VAIN.

GROOM KILLER BY TRAIN.’

SYDNEY, April 26,

Many poignant features are associated with, the death last Saturday—his wedding day —of Robert L. Hollingworth, of JSutheiTand, a suburb of Sydney. Mr. Hollingworth was 26 years of age, and his bride to be was Alias- Hilda Coakes, an attractive girl of R) (writes the ‘‘Auckland Herald’s” correspondent). The wedding was to have taken pdace at 4 o’clock, but it was not until '4.30 that the police were able to locate the girl’s house and inform her that Mr. Hollingworth had been cut to pieces by a train on the. underground city railway. The wedding breakfast had been set, and M is® Coakes, in wreath and veil, was awating a message to say that the bridegroom had left for the church. She was naturally prostrated by the tragic news.

Mr. Hollingworth was at Miss Coakes’s home on Friday night, and when leaving lie told her that he had made arrangements to go to a friend’s house nearby at noon on Saturday to dress for the wedding. It was arranged that when Mr. Hollingworth left for the church a message should he sent to Miss Coakes. Mr. Hollingworth’s clothes were laid out ready for him, and Miss Coakes, having spent the morning fitting her bridal dress, helping the bridesmaids ill their preparations, and arranging the presents, was at the appointed hour awaiting the message. Some time after the appointed hour a police oar arrived and conveyed the news of the tragedy to the girl’s father. At the church everything was ready, and the guests had become anxious. After a suggestion that the wedding should be postponed until 7 o’clock the news was broken there also.

Mr. Hollingworth’® body was found, terribly mutilated, just inside one of the tunnels of the underground railway at 11.10 a.m. The driver of the train which ran over him told the police that he saw the man come cut of one of the workmen’s refuges in the tunnel and' move in front of the train. Receipts found in Hollingworth’s pockets were tragic evidence of the wedding that had been planned. One was for a deposit on furniture, another for the ring. Just how he came to be in a tunnel of the city railway remains a mystery.

Some years ago Mr. Hollingworth, while riding a hors© in the country, fell from the saddle, and was dragged some distance and kicked by the animal. It is stated that sometimes he felt- the effects of that- accident. In having been paid off a. week before' his wedding day, Mr. Hollingworth is said to have been worried over a disagreement with his father concerning some property. Miss Coakes stated that when slie did not receive the promised message she feared that, something serious had happened. “I had a sort of premonition that- all was not well.” she added.