LONELY HOUSE MYSTERY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 258, 22 March 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)

LONELY HOUSE MYSTERY

SERVANT FOUND BEAD AND MISTRESS DYING.

London, January 24. Two old women—.Mrs. Woods, the octogenarian daughter of the great engineer, Isambard Brunei, and her servant, Maria Seaton—have met death in tragic fashion at a house in West-hill, Sydenham.

An untouched milk-can on the doorstep yesterday morning aroused a milkman's suspicions, and he tohl the police. When they broke into the house at noon they found the servant lying dead at the foot of the stairs. In a bedroom Mrs. Woods lay at the point of death. A medical man was summoned, but soon after his arrival Mrs. Woods died.

The servant had .been dead at least twenty-four hours, and it is surmised that while attending to her mistress she tripped on a pile, of sacking on the stairs and broke her neck" in the fall.

Mr. P. D. I'etrides, a barrister, whose family have been next-door neighbors for a generation, told a reporter that Mrs. Woods was eighty years old, and bad lived in the house with her servant (who was about sixty years old), for twenty-five years. "She was a clever woman," said Mr. Petrifies, "but an invalid, and we have not seen her much for a long time. Her husband died some years ago. I believe, they originally lived in Manchester.

"She and her servant kept to the house, and rarely had a caller. The last, time the servant was seen was by a tradesman on Tuesday. There was a terrier in the house, which had apparently been well fed. for we never hcaYd it barking." The house is a substantial threestoreyed building with a tall tree in the front, garden. Isambard P.vunel. the father of Mrs. Woods, was the man who designed the famous vessel, the Great, Eastern. Me was born in lSiMi. and at the age of twenty-seven was appointed engineer of the newly-projected Great Western Kailway. In lSr>2. during his connection as engineer with (he Australian Mail Company. he broached his scheme for a great ship, and after many unsuccessful launching attempts, the Great Eastern wa-, floated on -Tanuai'v 31, IRSK.

TTe built the old TTuufterford suspension bridge over (.lie Thames, which was displaced in lS(i-2 hv flic Charing Cross rail<vav bridge. Brunei's f ; illict- whs a French exile with a genius for civil engineering. who hored (lie first, tunnel under (he Thames between Wapping and Tiofherhif lie.