THE BRAVO CASE.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 160, 21 October 1876, Page 2

THE BRAVO CASE.

[CANTERBURY PRESS} The inquiry into the death of the late Mr. Bravo, or the “ Balham Mystery,’’ as it-is termed, is, an point of■ popular interest, running even the Tichborne case hard. I have not touched upon it in my previous letters, as I make it a rule to give your readers as small doses •of “penny dreadfuls” as is consistent with my duty of keeping them “an couraut” wiili passing events in this country. The Bravo case, however, has reached that point of notoriety when 1 can no longer, as your Loudon correspondent, be silent upon it. It is the principal topic of conversation It may be as well to run quickly over the story. In October last Mr Bravo, a young barrister, thirty years of age, and with fair professional prospects, met at Brighton a Mrs Ricardo, the widow of a Captain Ricardo, late of the Grenadier Guards. Mrs Ricardo was young, goodlooking, .'fascinating, and the possessor of an income of between four and live thousand a year. A mutual liking sprang up between the two. The courtship was short, and they were married in the following December. After the marriage they resided at the Priory, Balham, throe or four miles out of London. Here, according to the evidence of most of the witnesses they appear to have lived comfortably together. Suddenly, one evening in April last, that is to say about four months after the marriage, Mr. Bravo is suddenly, taken ill. Numerous medical men'arc called in, amongst them Sir William Gull, who successfully attended the Prince of Wales in his illness. Mr Bravo is found to be suffering from the effects of poison. All efforts to save him arc unavailing, and he dies in throe days. A coroner’s inquest is held, and a verdict of “ Suicide” is returned. People’s tongues, however, continue to wag busily, and rumours get abroad that Mr Bravo did not die by bis own hand. Certain facts are brought to the notice of the Troacuiy, whereupon the Lord Chief Justice grants a-fresh enquiry' on the grounds of insufficiency of evidence at the former one. This application his lordship grants, the proceedings of the inquest are quashed, an authority for the exhumation of the body is given, and fresh enquiry under the same coroner ordered to be held. This enquiry has now lasted nineteen days, and the theory of suicide is apparently being gradually upset. The most “astounding revelations” are being made, and a good deal of garbage is being served up to the public daily. One of the most striking and revolting features of the case is the criminal intimacy which lias been si town to have existed, before the marriage with Mr Bravo, between Mrs Bravo and a Dr. Gully. Mrs Bravo is a young, goodlooking woman ol thirty, rich and accomplished; Dr. Gully is an old man just on seventy, with a wife ninety years of age. The advisability of exhuming the bodies of Captain Ricardo (Mrs Bravo’s first husband) and Lady Catherine Ricardo, In's mother, both of whom died suddenly some years ago, was broached a few nights ago in Parliament, and it is thought that the necessary authority for the exhumation will be given. .It is long since so sensational a case lias riveted public attention. Mrs Bravo’s father is a Mr Campbell, a gentleman who amassed a largo fortune in Australia, and lias resided in this country for many ye .rs.