A FIENDISH CRIME.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 39

A FIENDISH CRIME.

TIIE MOST GIIASTLY TB AG EDY EVER KNOWN IN BIRMINGHAM.

A frightful murder with many features of the “Jack the Ripper” tragedies is reported at great length by tho Birmingham Weekly Post, which declares the crime to be tho most fiendish ever perpetrated in that city. The victim was a little girl named May Lewis, only ten years old, and tho perpetrator a dissipated young fellow named Frank Taylor. Taylor met the little girl in tho street and brought her into his parents’ house, where in an attic room lie outraged, murdered and cut her up. Ho then carried her out and hid the body in the yard. The Birmingham Post thus describes tho disorderly scenes at the funeral of the little victim : ■ —Tho funeral of May Lewis, the unfortunate little victim in tho Yyse street tragedy, took place on Thursday afternoon, at Wittou Cemetery, and tho event was marked by a morbid curiosity on the part of many thousands of persons, chiefly of the female sex. Before noon small knots of spectators assembled in the neighbourhood of 16 Court, Smith street, where tho parents of the murdered girl reside, and by 2 o’clock the crowd had assumed such an unexpected size that extra police precautions, in addition to special arrangements previously made, wero necessary to maintain anything like order. Smith street itself was packed as densely as any approach to a popular fete could possibly be, and the noise and ribaldry that prevailed wero more in consonaneo with such an event than in accord with tho horrible surroundings of one of tho most ghastly tragedies ever recorded in Birmingham. It is estimated that the crowd by tho time tho funeral procession started for tho cemetery numbered nearly 50,000, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the police could keep the mob from tho hearse containing its sad burden. Among the wreaths placed on the coffin was one from Miss Dale, Calthorpe road, and others from schoolmates, tho girls employed at tho Hughes Cycle Works, tho teachers of the Smith street branch of tin* People’s Chapel, tho scholars of Summer lane Board School, Ac. Along tho 1 no of route thousands of people eagerly waited for the procession, and at the cemetery there was a huge crowd. Some idea of the extraordinary crowd may be gathered from the fact that for fully an hour the concourso of people in the Old Square waiting for Witton ears was something like what may be expected to-day for the semi-final tie of the English Cup, excepting that women wore tho passengers in waiting. At tho cemetery during the time the service was being conducted in the chapel by the Rev S. Carter thousands of women congregated, and when tho bearers—six littlo

girls —emerged from the building with tho remains of their late companion the crowd, heedless of all decency and thought for others’ feelings, trampled over neat ly-kept and flowered graves in a manner which was positively shocking to observe. The few county police who were present wero perpcrfectly powerless. At the graveside tho proceedings were brief, aud afterwards there were many expressions of sincere grief shown by the number of flowers—somo very humble specimens—which were dropped into the little victim’s grave.