THE ELTHAM MURDER.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1714, 22 March 1888, Page 4

THE ELTHAM MURDER.

Telegrams from Sydney recently inUnrated that Michael Carroll, a laborer, had confessed in a drunken fit to the murder of hi's sweetheart, Mary Olouiton, nineteen yean agjo, near'Woolwich, England. B. W. Pook, a printer, tried, and acquitted for the murder;**.On referring W the (Otago Daily Times) files of September 25th, 1871, an exchange finds the following reference to the case, taken from the Spectator of July in the same year This day week a verdict of acquittal of Mr E. W. Pook, the person accused of the Eltham murder, was given, after a trial, in which the conduct of the police in getting up the case was subjected to the severest censure by the Judge (Mr Justice Bovill), so completely had they neglected those elements of evidence which seemed lo bear in favor of the prisoner —for example, the fact that the locket which he was said to have given the murdered girl bad been, given to, her, as was frankly admitted, by another, person. The evidence went to show that the person who purchased on Monday evening the 21th April, the plasterer’s hammer with which the murder was commited wore light trouser* and waistcoat, whereas the prisoner wore dark trousers and waistcoat and had never possessed a light suit; that at the time the murder was committed he was leaning over a bridge at Lewisham In the hope of seeing the young lady to whom he was paying attentions, and that he returned homo the same evening in his utual health and spirits, and without any sign of discomposure, sleeping with hip brother as usual. It was also positively sworn by all the members of the family that during the stay of the murdered girl in the family there was no sign whatever of intimacy between them, although young Mr Pook, being liable to fits, was constantly under the close inspection of hie relatives, and slept with his brother. It was also shown that there was hardly time for the prisoner to have committed the murder add reached the shop on Eoyal Hill, where he was seen at 9 o’clock—a distance of two and threequarter miles—in the h-If-hour between the time when the deceased was last seen alive and the time when prisoner entered Mrs Plane's shop to brush his clothes. On the whole, the acquittal was not only inevitable, bub the grounds on it was given ought to have wiped out all reasonable suspicion as well.

Several people who were residents at Greenwich at the time of the tragedy, have written to the Sydney papers, stating that, from their personal recollections, Carroll’s confession of the murder of Mias (Houston must be an hallucination. One writer states that a similar confession was made at the time of the murder.

A telegram from Sydney dated the 26th states that the telf-aocused murderer, Carroll, has bean formally charged with the murder of Mies (Houston, or, as the affair is more more widely known, with the Eltham murder. One circumstance, which gives an air of probability to Oarroll’s story, ia that, at tbs time of the murder, it was reported that a soldier bad been seen running away from the spot where the murdered girl was subsequently discovered, This man could not afterwards be found. It will be remembered that Carroll was a soldier, and had deserted. It appears however, that he had not deserted when the murder was committed, and his own story bears out the theory that he was the soldier seen at tbe time.