MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2480, 2 March 1881, Page 4

MISTAKEN IDENTITY.

A Geneva correspondent writes : “ A curious case of mistaken identity, of which Professor Schuliu, of Basel University, was the victim, occurred a few days ago. The Professor, while making an excursion in the Weisenthal in the Grand Duchy of Baden, was arrested at the village of Hagen by the local nolice, and lodged in the gaol of Lorrach, on a charge of having as saulted a woman in that neighborhood a short time previously. In vain he protested his innocence, explained that at the time the alleged offence had been perpetrated he was at Basel, and asked leave to communicate with his friends. The public prosecutor said that a serious crime had been committed, and that several witnesses were ready to swear that Herr Schnlin was the guilty man- He refused to listen to his explanations,! and the judge before whom the Professor had been brought sent him back to his cell, where he was kept ten days. As it happened, Herr Schulin was betrothed and the marriage day fixed, and his confinement in prison on so serious a charge, the difficulty of confuting it, and the prospect of losing at once his character, his bride, and his professional chair, so preyed upon his mind that he attempted to commit suicide by cutting openjiis veins with a pocket knife, an attempt in which ho almost succeeded. Either alarmed by this incident, or moved by his entreaties, the German authorities allowed him at length to communicate with his friends, when overwhelming evidence was at once forthcoming, that on the day when the offence was committed Herr Schulin was lecturing in Basel University. Almost at the same time the man for whom he had been mistaken by the Weisenthal police was arrested, and the professor’s innocence of the crime thus laid to his charge thus doubly demonstrated ; and this is probably all the satisfaction he will ever obtain for his ten days’ incarceration in a' dungeon, and the great anxiety be was compelled to undergo.”