CLIMB IN THE MOONLIGHT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 2 (Supplement)

CLIMB IN THE MOONLIGHT.

NURSE'S ADVENTURE.

More suggestive of a cinematograph episode than an incident in real'life was the story unfolded at Exeter a few weeks ago when Hannah Elliott, nurse to a dentist's wife, was charged with being unlawfully on the premises of Mr. Hicks, a hairdresser, in the early morning. Mr. Hicks told how he was awakened about 1.30 a.m. by the smashing of glass. He found a skylight had been broken, and saw a woman's slipper on the floor beneath. When search was made on the roof Elliott was seen in her room some distance away, but she denied all knowledge of a candle found near her window and of the slipper. It was stated that to reach Mr. Hicks' house she must have walked over a glass roof on a plank for ten feet, then crawled on her hands and feet for another ten feet past a skylight, then along a narrow gutter for 20 feet with her hands on the roof, then under a telephone wire, then over a roof, and down a gullv 15 feet long, then over a roof six feet high, past a 10ft chimney stack, and then under another telephone wire. Gn reaching prosecutor's house she put a foot through a skylight and lost a slipper. She returned over the roofs to her room, where the police found her. Miss Elliott said that she suffered from sleeplessness, and went out on to the roof for fresh air and to smoke a cigarette, which she occasionally did. Attracted by the street lights, she climbed over the roofs out of curiosity, it being a bright moonlight night. She had no difficulty in. climbing, but her foot slipped through the skvlight window. Prisoner, who wept in dock and had to be given restoratives, was given the benefit of the doubt, and discharged.