Circumstances Lied in Life Melodrama.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 6 November 1914, Page 2

Circumstances Lied in Life Melodrama.

DOCTORS' EVIDENCE RESCUES GIRL IN CA.UV OF COINCIDENCES.

One of those melodramas in which the heroine is wrongfully accused of murder and survives three acts full ! of. woes has been staged in real life at the Welsh village of Prestat.yn. ' But in the real life drama the heroine was an eighteen-year-old servant girl, Alice Hughes, and her troubles have been cut short by an unmelodramatic inquest. Alice was .maid to Miss Humphreys, a lady of 58. One night folk heard high words between ini.stiess and irifm1, • and the mistress sent for the village constable. Later the maid ran from the house and locked the door behind her. Later still, the police got into the house, _ and there found the mistress dead, with the marks of fingers upon her throat. Here were all the elements for Act I. The police gathered them up and arrested the maid, who protested her innocence. But the clouds were as gloomy above her as they were in any Act IT. on the stage. Then came the Coroner upon the scene of tragedy. Doctors held a postmortem examination of the dead woman. They came to one unanimous conclusion : That the old lady had died of a convulsive fit, and had grasped her throat with her left hand in the terrible effort to get air. I "It is fair to the maid to say," remarked the Coroner, "that the medical testimony bears out the narrative she has given the police." The jury agreed that the mistress died from natural causes. The lesson of the real life melodrama was \ that of the drama staged ; that it is easy for circumstances to build up a lie.