ON TRIAL FOR WIFE MURDER

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2418, 25 March 1915, Page 6

ON TRIAL FOR WIFE MURDER

SENSATIONAL CASE IN LONDON

MYSTERIOUS DEATHS OF THREE WIVES

(By Telegraph—Press A6sn.—Oopyright.)

. London, March 23. .Th o trial of George Smith, charged with murdering three wives—Beatrice Mundy in. July, 1912, Alice Burnham in December, 1913, and Margaret Lofty in December, 1914—has commenced. Mr. Bodkin, K.G 1 ., for the prosecuS™ u l i at Smith had obtained £2800 by two of the deaths, and might havo obtained £700 by the third. During the period of the crimes Smith had intermittently cohabited with a fourth v.oman, with whom he had contracted a bogus marriage. His legal wife, whom ho married in 1898, was still alive. In all three cases ho had persuaded the women to make wills appointing him sole legatee. All had been drowned m baths, and Smith had always been the first to discover the death. Smith was born at Bow in 1872, and was for some time a dealer in second-hand furniture and antiques. Beatrice Mundy was the daughter of a bank manager at Weymouth, and inherited £2500. She purchased a bath for 375. 6d. on July 5, and executed her will on July 8. Prisoner on July. 10 called in a doctor, and said his wife had had a fit. The doctor examined the woman, but found no signs of a fit. A similar thiug happened on July 12. When the doctor was called on July 13 he found Mundy in the bath with her head submerged. Mr. Bodkin asserted that the head must have been forced under or the raised in order to allow the head to slide down.

Smith insured his next victim, Alice Burnham, for £600 on December 4. On the pair arriving at Blackpool on July 10, Smith refused to take apartments where there was no bathroom. He consulted a doctor regarding Alice Bumham's headaches. The woman waff drowned on December 12. A quantity of hair was found on the sides of tha bath, as though there had been some struggle. Prisoner had insisted that both Beatrice Mundy and Alice Burnham should be buried inexpensively in a public grave. Mr. Bodkin 6tated that after each death Smith disappeared, and rejoined Edith Pegler, whom he married in 1908, but left for weeks and months. In cach case the woman who died was in a strange house, yet left the bathroom door unfastened.

Some time last month the Home Office orderod the exhumation of the bodies of tho two wives of George Smith, both of whom died while in a bath shortly after marriage to Smith. Smith was then on remand on a charge of making a. false entry in a marriage register. In outlining the case Mr. Bodkin, K.C.. stated that the accused had contracted several marriages. Evidence was given of three other marriages. One woman stated that a few days after her wedding in September last Smith took her savings, totalling £90, and disappeared. In another case Smith married the eghteen-year-old daughter of parents whose consent had boon refused.