A LADY’S FIGHT FOR LIFE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 19

A LADY’S FIGHT FOR LIFE

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

LONDON. December 18.

Society in North Staffordshire is just now all excitement over an outrage committed in the Newcastl e-und-er-Dyne tunnel on Miss Eva Goss, the daughter of a well-known Stoke-on-Trent mamufaeturer and! J.P. Miss Goss was returning by an evening train to Stoke, and just before the train entered the tunnel the second-class compartment in which she eat alone was invailed by a man, who after a few commonplace remarks, suddenly made a violent attack upon her. The frightened woman, who happily for herself is a first-class athlete and possessed of more than the ordinary strength of her sex, at once made a desperate effort to pull the communication cord. She reached it. hut the ruffian tore- her hand away. Again she tried, and once more pulled l the cord down a little way, but was once more forced to let it go. Then, struggling with all her might against the brute’s attempts to force her to the floor, she appealed piteously to him to let her alone. In reply the fellow threatened to throw her out of the window if she resisted further. The wovvan’s answer was that she would prefer that rather than submit, and, enraged, the ruffian struck her a series of heavy blows with his fist on the hoafi. ±±ait insensible through his violence, and with her strength rapidly going, the victim was at length forced to the floor. The horror of her position seems to have given Miss Goss a fresh lease of vitality, for, seizing the man’s neckerchief, she twisted it so as to make liian gasp for breath, pleading the while that he should take all her money and jewels and let her alotne. Having discovered by this time that his victim was not likely to yield, so long as her senses remained, the ruffian hearkened to the temptation held out by the young woman. Savagely demanding her purse he snatched it from her and, as the tram came again into the open, disappeared from the carriage. Half dead with fright and! her exertions, Miss Goss lay in the carriage till it pulled up at Longport Station. Then, pulling herself together, she told her tale to the station officials and then collapsed. Her face and garments bore eloquent testimony to the violence of the struggle she had gone through, and after being escorted to Stoke by an official she was taken in a cab home. For many hours M.ss Goss was dangerously ill, and was finable to give any description of her assailant, whom she now describes as a man, dressed as a labourer, or medium build and between twenty-four and "thirty years of age. Humours were circulated that the outrage had been committed by a lunatic, who had escaped from Oheddleton Asylum, b»ut the poLoe-have a different theory. Several similar out-

rages occurred during last winter, anft more than once policemen were station-, ed at intervals along the line, though they failed to catch any one. The police believe that Miss Goss's assailant is an ex-railway man, from his expert knowledge of the trains and the nimble way ho boards and 1 jumps off trains ini motion.

It has transpired that both the guard' and .the driver of the train in which Miss Goss was maltreated noticed that tffie communication cord was being pulled during the tunnel passage. Yet they not only failed to stop the train then and there, but allowed it to run past the station between the tunnel and Longport station 1 As there. is a£s fine for pulling the cord without reasonable cauke, it certainly seems to be a matter for inquiry why the men an charge of the train ignored! Miss Goss'a signals of distress.