AN OLD CRIME

Hokitika Guardian, 10 July 1930, Page 2

AN OLD CRIME

WOMAN’S ‘ ‘CONFESSION. ’’

STORY OF A FIGHT

SYDNEY, June 26

Constable Berthun, of Melbourne, had a remarkable experience on Monday last. While lie "'as at an hotel in the city he was accosted by a woman, who said that she wanted to give herself up to the police for having killed a woman at Adelaide two and a half years ago. The constable was amazed, thinking that the woman might be mad. However, he took her to the police station, and there it was discovered that there might after all he some justification for her statement. She said that two and a half years ago she was living in Levine street, Birkenhead (South Australia). One afternoon she was drinking at an hotel in Adelaide with a woman whom she knew only as “Pommy Nell.” After an argument between herself and this woman they went with some seamen to the house where they were staying. There they fought. The woman who gave herself up is alleged to have told the constable that she picked up a bottle from th e table and threw it at her opponent. She did not know whether it struck the other woman, who fell - •“Pommy Nell” was then picked np> and taken to her Antagonist's bedroom. She hr.d two black eyes and was bleeding . from the mouth, She stayed there for several weeks, and at times she complained of pains in her head, Later she left the house and went into hospital, Constable ‘Berthun was told by the woman that she came to Melbourne', about a year ago, and she was told there that “Pommy Nell” had died. On Saturday afternoon slip ,spoke to a Sfeaman about tbe Adelaide affair, and it was then that she decided to give herself up.

The Adelaide police believe that “Pommy Nell” is identical with Nellie Leigh, who lived in the Birkenhead distret, and who died at Adelaide in June, 1928, from an abscess on the brain. She was taken to the hospital from an address at Port Adelaide. Another woman in the Birkenhead district was known as “Pommy Maud.” Her real name "as Mrs . Carr, and she was murdered b.v having her throat cut in June last year. Her husband, Frederick Carr, was executed for this crime in November last year.

The woman who gave herself up in Melbourne lias been charged with vagrancy, and she has been remanded for a week pending further inquiries by the police at Adelaide.

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—Watkins

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THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA.

Apropos of facetious reference to “wheeling smoke’’ as a spare-time occupation revives the story of the mental patient. A visitor to the hospital ground noted that one patient in a pick-and-shovel gang wheeled his harrow up-side down. He asked: “Why don’t you turn your barrow, the other way up?” “I did yesterday,” said the patient-, “and they filled it with cilay !” Thore is the excellent story of a bygone medical Parliamentarian who, in his capacity as a philanthropist, visited a mental hospital. He walked up the long gardens and stopped to talk to a gardener who was tending the flowers. Suddenly the gardener threw down his fork and wildly chased the little man. The little man was noted for his addiction to sport, and. although lie was not fit, he tried hard to break nine over gravelled walks as the gardening patient bounded after him. The doctor told M.A.T. that the pursuit lasted for about seven minutes. “T could almost feel him breathing on the back of my neck,” he said. “In my fright, I called out. As a couple of officers came rushing to my rescue, the patient ran me into a bush and gently touched me on the shoulder. ‘Tig,’ he said.”