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Manawatu Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1600, 5 January 1886, Page 4

The Christclmrch correspondent of \ the Otago Daily Times gives the following particulars regarding the antecedents of the Godfreys, who. are mixed up m "The Severed Hand Mystery ":—Godfrey was cook at the Sunnyside Asylum, and the gossips have decided that he must have got his hand from the corpse of a lunatic upon which a post mortem examination was not long ago held. I must aay that nature has not been too kind to poor Godfrey and his brother m the matter of appearances. Their looks are agin 'em. Mrs Howard, on the other hand, who shares with them the suspicions of conspiracy, is a 'quiet looking, ordinary little woman, who to all outward seeming should be quite incapable of designing, or even aiding, m a daring and original scheme of fraud and deception. Of course she might be a mere tool m the hands of the Godfreys and her husband, supposing the latter to be alive. There is a curious story about concerning one of the Godfreys. It is said that this is not the first time on Which he has figured as the discoverer of a valuable missing something. On a former occasion a safe csntaining certain documents of great importance had been stolen, and a reward offered for the finder. It is said that Godfrey was the lucky man, and that he found the sate m such an extremely out-of-the-way place — the bottom of a river near Christqliurch —that the police have kept their eye upon him ever since.