MURDER OF A HOSPITAL NURSE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9497, 28 April 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

MURDER OF A HOSPITAL NURSE.

DEATH SENTENCE AT NOTTINGHAM. At the Nottingham Assizes, on Monday, March 5, before Justice Hawkins, Walter Smith, machinist, was indicted for the murder' of Catherine Mary Cross, a young hospital nurse, on December 2. Prisoner occupied some rooms in a Nottingham factory, where he was engaged in perfecting a chenille machine which he had invented. The deceased, who was twenty-five years of age, had been employed at the Hosptial for Women at Liverpool, and on November 25 she went to Nottingham on a visit to her mother. She was then nob acquainted with the prisoner, bub she knew his mother, upon whom she called during her stay in Nottingham, and was then introduced to the young man. He asked her to go to the factory to see his machine, and ib was arranged that she should do so on Saturday, December 2. On the previous day prisoner purchased a revolver at a Nottingham gunsmith's. On the Saturday morning at 11.20 Miss Cross and Smith were seen to enter the latter's room at the factory together. Shortly before 1 o'clock the other tenants of the factory heard three shots fired, and the girl was seen descending the stairs of the factory. The door of the prisoner's rooms opened outwards, and from the displacement of the lock ib was evident that the girl had had to burst it open to escape. She was bleeding, and the front of her dress was torn. She was taken to a neighbouring house, and from thence to the hospital. Meanwhile prisoner was seen to leave the factory, and walk quietly away. He was subsequently arrested. At the hospital the girl's depositions were taken, the prisoner being 1 present. She stated that when prisoner shot her he said," Your money or your life," and she thought it was fun. He fired three shots, but she thought only one struck her. They had no words, and she could give no reason for his shooting her. On being asked if he had any question to put, the prisoner said the pistol went off by accident. The doctor found ib necessary to perform the operation of tracheotomy, bub the girl died on the following Wednesday. A postmortem examination revealed the fact that the bullet had passed through the windpipe and gullet and lodged in the spine. The prisoner was found guilty and sentenced to death.