AN ALLEGED CONFESSION

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LI, Issue 9065, 10 April 1906, Page 5

AN ALLEGED CONFESSION

TO SECURE A PASSAGE TO ENGLAND

[PMSB ASSOCIATION. ]

(i (Received April 10, 9.3 a.m.) ' PIETERMARITZBURG, April 9. dive asserts that he confessed in order to secure a, passage to England. -

I« reference to the siusrender of Clive, who confessed to the murder of Mies Elizabeth Camp in February, 1897, it appears that Miss Camp was manager of an hotel at Walworth, and was found brutally murdered in a suburban train on the London and South- Westerna railway. There was nieitlier trace of the murderer, .nor any assignable motive for the crime, which became one of the greatest sensations of its day. The weapon with which the crime had been committed (a. chemist's heavy pestle) was discovered some days later near the line of Putney. It was covered with dTied_ blood and one or two hairs from the girl's head were stuck to it. The victim's clothes weane badly torn and smeared with blood but against the outrage was the fact that it must have been necessary actually to kill the woman on I leaving one station in order to crowd the body "under the seat in tune to leave the > train at the next. Theories are innumerable, end in the course of a few days Scotland Yard was testing no le6S than forty alternative hypothesis. The apparent absence of any motive led to an | especial look-out, for .escaped; lunatics^., and i a half-witted maoji. was wrested at Reading,, and subsequently released" It may be mentioned that this murder caused a panic throughout the length and breadth of England, and the Board of Trade was urgently requested to insist on a more thorough system of alarms on trains. At the^ came time there was a remarkable drop ping-off in the number of women travelling in the first and eecond-clasfies, aaid an increased patronage of the humbler but more frequented third.