A RAILWAY TRAGEDY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1208, 24 July 1884, Page 3

A RAILWAY TRAGEDY.

There has been a mysterious death on the Great Eastern railway, writes the correspondent of an Adelaide papei, which, there seems reason to believe, is the result of a murder, though as yet no motive for the commission of such a crime is alleged. On May 19 a married woman named Sarah Gilbert, aged 39, living apart from her husband, went to Worley Barracks, in Essex, to sec her son, Frederick Gilbert, who is a private in the Essex militia. The young man took his mother to a public house before parting from her, and they bad some beer together. Then he left her, and another witness saw her seated close beside a soldier named William Hams, with whom she was drinking on apparently familiar terms, for the witness reproached Barrie, as a merried man, for his flirtation. Both the soldier, Harris and the woman took third-class tickets for Romford by the 10.47 train, and the guard of that train eaw them enter separately different compartments of the same car. But their tickets weie taken soma time before the train wee due, and during the interval of waiting a porter beard screaming and scuffling from a ladies’ room where the gas was put out and saw the aame soldier and woman come out. of the room and go to a public house for a glass of ale. On reaching Harold Wood, the guard noticed that the door of the eompartment where the woman had been sitting was unfastened. Ho pulled it open and saw the soldier sitting in the compartment, but the woman was gone. “ Where is the lady ?” asked he. “ She has just got out,” was the reply ; but the guard knew no one bad got out, and he therefore examined the carriage, where he found blood and other sign* of a struggle. In the meantime the woman Was found in a dying state on the metals near Brentwood station, much bruised about the face and body, and with a fractured skull, the result, according to a surgeon’s opinion, of falling from the train upon the auxiliary signal wires. The soldier when arrested appeared dazed, and denied all knowledge of the matter. Great sympathy is felt for his young wife.