ATTEMPTED MURDER.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17412, 26 May 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

ATTEMPTED MURDER.

FATE OF TINY TOT.

“LITTLE MOTHER” ACCUSED. Residents of Now Wortlcy, a suburb of 'Leeds, have boon slartlod by a poignant. tragedy In their midst, which has resulted In a charge /of murder being preferred against a 14-year-old girl. Accompanied by a police matron, Ihe girl, Edith Emily Hughes, a good-look-ing child, with bobbed hair and dark 1 complexion, appeared before the sti-

pendiary, Mr 1 Horace Marshall, and a lady magistrate, at a special silling of the Hhildrcn’s Court, held in the stipendiary’s private room, ilatless, and with her face tear-stained, she kepi, | i wiping her eyes with a handkerchief during the few moments in which j Supt. Pass liriefiy explained the circumstances under which she came into custody. . The superintendent related that as the result of a communication, he F went to Grecnland-place, New Wortley, | where he found Florence May Hughes, j .'3, sister of accused, lying dead, with I marks of strangulation on her neck. E A doctor, in the presence of Edith | Hughes, expressed the opinion that | death was due to strangulation, and, | later on, the girl admitted to the | superintendent that she had placed a j piece of string around the child’s neck j and Ihcn pulled the ends. On that j evidence the officer asked for a remand. The application was granted, and Edith Hughes, who had not spoken a word, was taken to a house of detention. Drama Added to Drama. Apart from formal identification, the onlv evidence tendered at the inquest was that of Dr. Hoyland Smith, who informed Sir William Clarke, the coroner, that the sole injury on the body was a mark round the neck, such as could have been caused by string forcibly twisted round. The injury could not have been caused by another child, aged five, who had been playing with Florence Hughes. The inquest was adjourned until June 28. Edith and the dead child arc the daughters of Mr James Hughes, an electrician, whose work necessarily keeps him away from home during Hie daytime. At one lime Hie accused •girl worked in a laundry, but recently, during her mother’s temporary absence at Birmingham, she has been looking after the home, 'which comprised a , family of four. The “ little mother,” as girls doing this kind of work arc known in the North, did her house- ./ hold duties well. At present the affair seems an inexplicable mystery. Half an hour before the tragedy was discovered the dead child, whose pet name was Ivy, was playing with other children near her home. The next thing that happened was Edith running up to a neighbour, named Mrs Bowers, who was standing at her front door, and saying, “ Will you come lo our house and look at our Ivy?” “ I think she is dead!” the girl added, and when Mrs Bowers entered the house where the Hughes’s lived she found the child lying dead on a> bed. Edith was then crying, and seemed agitated, and a doctor and the police were hurriedly summoned. Before they arrived, however, the girl, at the request of a neighbour, had telephoned to her father the news of Ivy’s death, thereby addind drama’ to drama.