A THIEF'S SURPRISE.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1128, 21 December 1883, Page 2

A THIEF'S SURPRISE.

Since Fntima looked into Bluebeard’s cupboard no more unpleasant surprise can have occurred to a woman (says the European Mail) than that which-befell Harriett Hcmsley, who abstracted a medical student’s trunk from the Midland Railway at Nottingham the other day. There is ho saying what such a trunk might or might not contain, and it is to imagine the feeling of intense interest with which the woman in question, after gaining her home in safety with the purloined trunk, proceeded to force the lock. But it is a thousand pities that no artist was present to delineate the change which must have come over her face when she saw the body of a child preserved in spirits, and other human remains. Imagination fails to depict the ghastly horror which that woman’s face must have expressed. That a murder, perhaps two or three murders, must have been committed, she cannot have entertained a doubt; and, after the first horror had passed away, the question, what to do with the the ghastly trouvaille, must have been difficult indeed. She apparently came to the conclusion that anything was better than to keep such a secret in the house, and, refastening the trunk, she took it to the railway station; hoping, no doubt, to leave it on the platform and retire undetected. The police had, however, received notice from the medical gentleman who owned the trunk of its loss, and she was accordingly arrested.