POISON DRAMA.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2785, 3 May 1911, Page 2

POISON DRAMA.

Mr Travers Humphreys, the well-

known Treasury counsel, returned from Kingston, Jamaica, where he was engaged in a murder trial, which he described as one of the most dramatic

cases in his experience,

Arthur Norman Verley, aged 21, the son of a wealthy planter who is president ot the Jockey Club in Jamaica, and well-known throughout the island, was charged with the murder, by poison, of a singularly beautiful woman of 28 named Florence Robinson, the wife of a Kingston solicitor. The two had known each other for some years.

Mrs Robinson was tound dead in the

clearing of a wood near Kingston last November. The evidence given at the trial showed that on the morning of the discovery of the body Verley called at a friend's house in' Kingston very ill and suffering from morphia poisoning. He said that he had left Mrs Robinson dead, at the spot where her body was subsequently found.

The prosecution submitted that Verley had confessed that he and Mrs Robinson were in love with each other, and had agreed to commit suicide together. It was proved for the prosecution that he had bought 40 grains of morphia in Kingston on the day he met Mrs Robinson. For the defence Mr Travels Humphreys submitted that Verley had repented of his decision and had not given Mrs Robinson the poison he had admittedly bought, but that she had some morphia

in her possession which she took while his back was turned. The jury took this view of the case and acquitted the

prisoner