EX-CRIMINAL’S CHIVALRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 340, 28 April 1928, Page 5

EX-CRIMINAL’S CHIVALRY

DIES TO SAVE WOMAN How William Thomas Wallace, 68, alias Thomas Harper, alias Thomas Mugging—a man who, it it was alleged, had a criminal past —met his death while attempting to shield a woman from the offensive behaviour of another man, was related in the Sydney City Coroner’s Court. While walking along Bathurst Street, near the intersection of Elizabeth Street, at about 6.20 p.m. one evening, a young woman, Ester Clarice J6el,‘ residing at Enmore, noticed a man behaving in an offensive manner, so her story to the coroner ran. “Here! try and show some respect for a lady!” she heard an old man say to the offender. “Think of your mother!” A little man, to whom this remonstrance was addressed, continued to use filthy language, and as Misss Joel passed on she heard the elderly Squire of Dames challenge the offender. A few moments later, when she again looked back, she saw the old man falling to the roadway, and the little man running toward Pitt Street. Half an hour later, when the man who had fallen was admitted to the Sydney Hospital, it was found that he was dead. Nobody knew his name, nor whence he came. Suspicion that he might have a history led Constable Vidler, of the fingerprint branch of the C.T.8., to make investigations, and it was only when prints were taken at the morgue that the identity of this knight of Sydney’s crowded streets was revealed. The coroner (Mr. Fletcher) found that death was due to injuries caused through a fall, but whether the fall was accidental or otherwise the evidence did not disclose.