THE ELTHAM MURDER.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 873, 12 October 1871, Page 3

THE ELTHAM MURDER.

A verdict of acqittal of Mr E. W. Pook, the persofa accused of the Eltham murder, has been 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 to bear in favour of the prisoner,—for example the fact that the locket which he was said to have given the murdered girl had been given to her, as was frank.y admitted, by another person. The evidence went to show that the person who purchased, ! on Monday evening, the 24th of April the plasterer's hammer with which the murder was committed, wore light trousers and waistcoat, whereas the prisoner wore dark trousers and waistcoat, and had never possessed a light suit; that at the time when this hammer was purchased he was in his brother's company, and at home ; that at the time the murder was committed on the 25th, 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 home the same evening in his usual health and spirits, and without any sign of discomposure, sleeping with his brother as usual. It was also positively sworn by all the members of the family, that during tho stay of the murdered girl in the family there was no sign of intimacy between them, although young Mr Pook, being liable to fits, was constantly under the close inspection of his relatives,-and slept with his brother. It was also shown that there was hardly time for the prisoner to have committed the murder and reach the shop on Royal Hill, where he was seen at 9 o'clock—a distance of 2f miles—in the half hour between the time when the deceased was last seen alive and the time when the prisoner entered Mrs Plane's shop to brush his clothes. On the whole, the acquittal was not only inevitable, but the grounds on which it was given ought to have wiped out all reasonable suspicion as well.