HANGED THROUGH A BUTTON

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10295, 2 June 1919, Page 7

HANGED THROUGH A BUTTON

StivlALL .TO GIULAT

• A constable at bouiuaiuptott "recently noticed brcaLU marlcs oil ,vhe interior of the window . .01 a jowcilci s snap. lie stopped—listened-,, inside were two-b urgj-rrs., A small duel But even -more-trivial -ones.,have. led. to similar arrests •in ■’ the past., ■ A cigarette of-a peculiar brand, lell behind by a,' burglar named Jb'Uzpatr rick in a city warehouse, earned lor aim a long term ot penal servitude. Another burglar, at Middlesbrough, was' run toearth. alter.a long chase, with only a broken -cigar •' baud as a clue. , Pierre Jaune, the famous French detective, who' died in’ 1915, once traced a murderer within lorty-eight hours, with no clue save a trousers button. Jjpspiqion-.jwas ni»t- .aroused m the Oi'ippen. case, by_ the spelling ot the victim's name, '"’Elmore,” with two “I’s” on a forged letter. Xhe mysterious murder... of a little girl iu Devonshire was, solved owing to the accidental finding-of.some; other hair in a,, bird’s nest,-a .remarkable case utilised by -Mr iiiden Phillpotts in his “Sam of Sorrow' Corner.” A single ,word, “Oudham,”. overheard by, chance at ,the , Peng® post office, was .the starling point of the inquiry winch’’brought to light the shocking murder by starvation and ill-usage of Mrs .Louis Staunton .iu a house rented,by her unnatural husband near that ‘remote village. The chance of a shutter falling upon a passer-by was the chief means of convicting a Liverpool youth, George Sumner; of the inurder of Misi Bradfield there some few years back. Orock, who nuifdered 1 a constable at Dalston in 1884, was brought to tho scaffold by a single initial hastily scratched' upon -ihe- blade of-a-chisel'.-' IJarly last year a girl-namcd"Nellio Trew was brutally done to death'on Eltham Common. In trying to-defend herself she had torn a - button from her assailant’s overcoat. ’ A'tiny clue! But it sufficed. _ . \ In the oaso of a similar murder at Bodmin some time back, perpetrated by a man named Ollison, the girl victim tore a’handful of hairfrom her assailant’s beard. The day following a constable whs waiting his turn in a barber’s shop when a man came in to get his beard trimmed. It was Ojlison. He was hanged. '