TUNNEL TRAGEDIES.

Lake County Press, Issue 2137, 27 September 1906, Page 7

TUNNEL TRAGEDIES.

f I,AM) TO STUAXOM 1)1 SIS AS 10.

If certain specialists are to be believed, the tragic mysteries of two women's death in railway tunnells in the vicinity of London within the year'have a remarkable scientific explanation. It. is asserted that they were not murdered, but the victims of strange nervous diseases, which become manifest only when the sufferers are shut up in a confined space. The facts of the latest, case are as follows : Mile. Lillie Rochald, a French girl of eighteen, cume to England several weeks ago to visit relatives near Rugby. At Rugby the trainsmen found the door of a railway carriage open, and a subsequent search revealed her mutilated body in the Crick tunnel. The police decided that she had been murdered and been thrown out on the tracks. The case was verysimilar to that of Miss Money, which occurred last October. Miss Money's mutilated body was found in Merstham tunnel, and the deduction was that murder had been committed. Now comes the mother of one victim. Countess Rochaid, with a statement which is accepted by many as a solution of the gild's death. "My daughter ought never to have travelled alone," said the Countess. "She was always greatly agitated in railway carriages, and invariably suffered from it sort of feeling of oppression, or suffocation. "Last Summer she spent her holidays with me in Paris. J met her hall way. at Dieppe. On gelling into the Paris train she suddenly became terribly agitated. Sin- rushed from oneside to the oilier of ihe compartment opening the windows and pressing her hands to her throat. Had I not, caught hold 'of her dress she certainly would have fallen on 1,, ihe line. She could mil account for her nervousness, which was such that she would not travel inside an omnibus.'' Physicians sa.v the .statement seems to prove that Mile. Rochaid was subject lo a complaint to which the medical name of cluiisfrophobia igiven. The victim of this complaint which is only found among the nervous or very, highly strung, is afraid of being shut up in a confined space, and is always liable to at tempt to escape from that confinement. Cases of this nervous disease and o: its opposite, agoraphobia, or dread o open spaces, are not. uncommon, and are recorded in all works on nervous diseases. The victim is said to be suffering from an imperative idea. and such ideas render men and women incapable of taking care of them selves, and liable to a sudden and terrible death ill the effort to avoid the imaginary evil.