REMARKABLE TRAGEDIES.

Wairarapa Age, 13 March 1922, Page 5

REMARKABLE TRAGEDIES.

A DREADFUL RECORD. IN LONDON, PARIS, AND POLAND. (Press Association —Copyright.) (Received 5.5 p.m.) London, March 11.—An extraordinary crime wave ie sweeping over England, including many mysterious murders which are baffling the police. Prominent are illicit love affairs, some ending in double suicide, others in murder. Within the past' fortnight several such cases have been reported. The wife of a prominent Manchester business man ran off with a skating rink instructor; the pair occupied a cottage in a Hampshire village as a honeymoon couple, and were not seen for several days, after which the police discovered the bodies in a bedroom. Another couple—a married man and a single woman—made a double suicide pact. They took poison and entered the sea at Southend; the man was drowned, but the woman cheated death. A married curate and hie lover drank poison in champagne at a Nottingham hotel and both died. Another inexplicable affair wa s a case in which lovers were eloping in a train. Suddenly the man shot the girl and turned the weapon on himself; he expired, but the girl was not seriously hurt. There have been numerous gas tragedies, in which couples died together. An unmarried mother at Chelsea, and her two sons, died from gas poisoning; the verdict against the woman was suicide and double murder. A verdict of murder was ret-urnea against a young man accused of strangling a girl at Brixton with a silk stocking. A labourer wa s sentenced to death for murdering a woman of 79, an oldage pensioner of Holborn; a youth was similarly sentenced for murdering his ffiancee at Clapton; and a boy is awaiting trial for giving his father a fatal blow after the latter had struck his mother. A widow of 55, living alone at Hen-ley-on-Thames, who was in constant dread of a man residing abroad, was found murdered. The police suggest that deceased met the murderer while travelling either to Canada or Australia. The day preceding the tragedy she left instructions regarding money. The sensation of the moment concerns the death of a beautiful girl, a West End dancer, believed to be a a victim of the drug habit, and the death of another girl in connection with which a married airman has been apprehended. Paris, March 11.—Pari s is experiencing a startling number of what the French describe as “crimes passion.” Poland is terrorised by a modern “Jack the Ripper.” Within three weeks the bodies of nine girls have been' found mutilated.—(A. and N.Z.)