A Suspicious Death at Hawera.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 71, 20 September 1895, Page 3

A Suspicious Death at Hawera.

Says the Hawera Star -.—The circumstances attending the death of the late Mary Maxwell and the proceedings consequent thereon require, it appears to us farther investigation. The evidence, incomplete as it was, disclosed the commission of one serious crime, and constructively probably yet another equally, if not more, serious. The colony has been horrified by recent telegrams from New South Wales, but here in Hawera there has been a case which in some features is almost as bad as the Sydney case, and while in Sydney, a great city where it is difficult to gather clues and trace actions, in a little place like Hawera— -where practically everybody's business is known to his neighbour - the whole matter is still surrounded by mystery, and the guilty have not been discovered. There cannot be a doubt on reading the evidence given at the inquest and at the District Court, that an illegal administration took place, and that in all probability the death of the woman •was doe to this, so that the person or persons concerned are open to a charge of manslaughter if not the capital offence. Why has not the affair been probed to the utmost ? The matter is of the gravest possible character, and with a sense of responsibility we say that the investigations which have been made have not been characterised by the thoroughness •which might be reasonably looked for in such a case. It is a great omission that every movement of the unfortunate deceased woman from the time she left Okaiawa until her death was ascertaihed by the police, and put before the coroner and the District Court. The decision of the District Court leaves much unexplained. We ask that there shall be an enquiry into the matter, and an investigation into the action taken by the police from the time that the affair ■was reported to them. It is the duty of the Government to originate an inquiry at once.