CHRISTMAS CRIMES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 1209, 6 January 1925, Page 6

CHRISTMAS CRIMES.

PICK POCKETS IN LONDON. LONDON, Dec. 24, Pickpockets reaped a harvest among London's Christmas crowds. Thieves jostled a diamond merchant, who was waiting for a 'bus at King's Cross, and robbed him of £620, and a wallet containing diamonds, worth £I6OO. Jealously was the cause of a West End tragedy. A street-sweeper, seeing a screaming woman on a balcony, bleeding from the throat, entered the mansion, and found a man lying dead on the bedroom floor, with his throat cut. The woman was in a swooning condition. A blood-stained razor was found wrapped in the woman's handkerchief. Friends say that the dead man, Ernest Wall, 30, a butler, quarrelled with his wife, Peggy, aged 20, who was jealous of him, since they were married, in October last. , The couple were alone in the house of their employers, who were spending Christmas in the Midlands. The woman is recovering. WIFE TAKES BLAME. LONDON, Dec.*27. Giving evidence at the inquest on Ernest Wall, aged 30, who was found dead in a West End flat on Christmas Eve with his throat cut, while- his wife Peggy, aged 20, was similarly wounded, Lilian Downs, a parlourmaid, said the Walls had often quarrellfH?. She had heard the wife threaten to throw her husband's presents into the fire. A constable stated that the wife said to him, "I'm to blame. It wasn't my husband's fault!" A detective said tho wife had written a love letter to a footman whom she had met in Leicestershire. The inquest was adjourned.