GLOUCESTER BENEDICT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12401, 24 October 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

GLOUCESTER BENEDICT.

EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE IN

ANOTHER ABDUCTION CASE. Evidence of more than an extraordinary character was given in the strange abduction case at Gloucester when the young local butcher named George Bertrand Peglar, a married man with four children, was committed for trial on the charge of abducting Edith Durham, 15, the daughter of a railway guard living at Gloucester. Detective Whyton said that when he read the warrant to him at Sheffield, where he had lived with the girl, prisoner exclaimed, "I would sooner be shot than face it. I hope the train will smash before we get to Gloucester." On the journey the prisoner said : —

" I have made no secret of the matter. I wrote to her father and mother telling them we should go away. It is true that her father objected to me going away, but the mother didn't, because when we went away the first time she said, 'You didn't <io it half smart; you ought to have let Edith go into service, and have taken her from there, instead of from home.' I am a fool. I know, and I shall have to go through it. I could not help it. Edith has been a hind girl to me. My wife was poorly, and could not look after me as well as she might. Edith could see that, and every chance she saw she did things for me, and that made the wife annoyed, and unhappiness commenced. My wife could see we were rather attached to each other, and I was very unhappy at home. I thought I would get rid of the girl, so I paid her a week's wages and sent her home. Then I was worse than ever. I seemed quite lost without her, and 1 got so low if I didn't see her for several days, but as soon as I saw her I could go back into the shop and work like a lion. The wife would say, 'Oh, you have seen Edith again,' and I said, 'I have.' and so things went on till one day I told the wife I could go on no longer—l must go to Edith. She said, 'Well, then, if you think you will be happier with her than with me, 1 will give you up to her.' So I met Edith on Hampstead Bridge, and we arranged to clear away. 1 told "her to go to Cheltenham and wait on the. station and I would meet her. I did, and we went to Liverpool and we stayed ai an hotel. I gave her a wedding ring, and she passed as my wife. If you will see her parents and ask them not to press the charge 1 will see any solicitor they like. I will sign not to speak to the girl again and allow her 5s a. week until she gets | .married."

The girl slated Peglar induced her to accompany him to Sheffield, where they lived together as man and wile. After a month's absence she wrote a pitiful letter to her father, and Peglar was arrested. Mrs. Durham denied ever having consented to the prisoner taking the girl away. Peglar, who pleaded not guilty, was admitted to bail. ,