FOUND DYING ON BEACH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22845, 28 September 1937, Page 16

FOUND DYING ON BEACH

ENGLISH SEASIDE MYSTERY YOUNG WOMAN'S STRANGE FATE [from our OWN correspondent] LONDON. Sept. 8 In spite of extensive police inquiries, complete mystery surrounds the discovery of a young woman lying, on the point of death, beneath the boards of a wooden staging on Herne Bay beach. For several days, apparently, she had lain in the small space between the boards and the shingle beneath, dying slowly from starvation. Such was her emaciated condition when removed that, though a woman of over 25, she was at-first thought to be a child of 14. She was taken,to hospital, and spoke no word before she died. Thousands of persons were eveiy day near the spot where she lay. Scores must have walked over the staging. Yet no cry appears to have been heard. There is no clue to her identity beyond the initials "C.V." on her clothing. Nor is there any conclusive explanation of how she came to be lying beneath the staging. It is surmised that she may have become ill and crawled .under the staging as a temporary refuge. .But even so, it is difficult to understand why, during the several days she lay there, she gave no indication of her presence and her plight. The merest call would have attracted attention to her. One puzzling circumstance is that she should have been wearing only one shoe. Prolonged search has failed to discover the second. The staging is used for an ice cream stall. It forms the top part of a jetty which leads to the Heine Bay boating pool. The woman was lying in a huddled position on the shingle beneath, her body almost touching the bottom of the floorboards. To reach the spot she would have had to go on the shingle beneath the staging, a .distance of about 10yds. from the end of the jetty. She had few possessions. Tied in the corner of a pocket handkerchief she was grasping in her hand was the sum of 2s sd.