HIDDEN IN CUPBOARD

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 865, 8 January 1930, Page 11

HIDDEN IN CUPBOARD

DEMENTED SERVANT TRIES SUICIDE STRUGGLE AT WINDOW A grim struggle to save a young woman from falling 50ft to the ground from a window-ledge to which she was hanging by her fingers, took place at Hove (England), last month. The woman was Eva Blake, a 23-year-old servant at a boardinghouse in Clarendon Villas, Hove. She vanished three days before and the police had been trying to trace her. A woman guest found the servant in a cupboard sft wide, sft high, and 2ft deep. While the guest was announcing her discovery Blake went to a bedroom window. What happened afterward was described by the proprietress, who said: I found her hanging to the windowledge by her fingers. I caught one of her arms, and the guest caught the other. We tried to pull her back, but she called to us to let her go. Just as her finger tips slipped from the ledge, I clutched the girdle round her waist. If the girdle had broken she would have fallen 50ft to the ground. It was ten minutes before we dragged her back to the room, exhausted. I don’t think Blake had anything to eat at all during her disappearance. We have missed no food and when she was found she was thoroughly exhausted by hunger. She was able to make only incoherent statements.