AMAZING INQUEST STORY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

AMAZING INQUEST STORY.

GIRL STACES ATTACK

An amazing story of a girl who staged an attack and said she had been poisoned by a, man, was told at, Ellesmere, Shropshire, recently at the inquest on May Mason, aged 29, of Cockshull. M'i ss Mason, who was known locally as May Austin, acted as housekeeper to a relative, Richard Henry Austin, and was ill a fortnight before she died at his house.

A district nurse spoke of visits to Miss Mason when the latter alleged that a strange man had attacked her. I lie first time she visited her she was on the floor semi conscious, and said a man had called and asked for food. She gave him some and he seized her. She remembered lalling and then no more. Later she said the same man came and poured something down her throat from a bottle. A neighbour gave evidence that nobody ever saw or heard the man who Miss Mason alleged attacked her. l')r. Derrnot Rogers said that on the day of the alleged attack Miss Mason appeared to be in a state of hysterical dementia. The only injury she had was a slight bruise on the knee, and there was nothing to suggest a case of assault. Death, in his opinion, was duo to exhaustion and acute gastro enteritis following the taking of red oxide of mercury. Sergeant Hepwood said everything pointed to the girl having staged both incidents. She was bright, and intelligent until her grandmother died. Since then she became weaker, A verdict of suicide while of unsound mind was returned.