The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-12-19
STRANGE DRAMA OF CHRISTMAS
 IN HISTORIC SEAPORT TOWN

who had slept with him. and in order to
 avoid detection, had, it was concluded l thrown the body into the sea, which in a short time by the set and run of the tide would take it into deep water and so disappear.
 A warrant was without delay issued for the apprehension of the young man, and that evening on his arrival home he was taken into custody. On his being searched 1 blood marks on his shirt and trousers were plainly visible, and in his pocket were 8 knife and a peculiar silver coin, both of which the landlady swore positively were her uncles property, and that she saw them in his possession on that evening just before he retired to rest along with
 the prisoner. Under these circumstances so strong a prina facie case had been
 made out that there was no alternative left but to commit him for trial at the Sandwich assizes. In vain did Rudland relate in his de- fense, the story of the incidents of the night as they had occurred. He could not account, of course, for the marks of
 blood on his person (ulless he had got them on returning to bed again in the semi-darkness), nor for the silver coin being in his possession. Accordingly his explanation received no credit.
 At the trial all the evidence appeared to point to a murder having been com
 
 ing unable to rebut these eircumstantial
 proofs, the jury found him guilty of the murder. and consequently he was con- demned to be executed in the public
 square at Sandwich at the expiration of three days from the date of trial.
 On the scaffold the young man vehem ently asserted his innocence and repeated the denial of having committed so foul , a deed as was alleged against him. The crowd pitied him, though it could not ooubt the justness of the sentence. The executioners of those days were not so expert at their trade as modern ones, nor were the appliances of the art of hanging so effectual as now-as the se- quel proves. The condemned man was very tall-his feet touched the ground and some of his friends who attended at the gallows continued to give the body some support as it was suspended. After being cut down, those friends bore it quickly away in a coffin, and in the space of an hour or two succeeded in restoring animation and by these means the inno- cent man was saved. When thoroughly 1 himself and able to get abroad and at large he was advised to quit the coun- try and never to return again. Acting Up to these recommendations he went to Portsmouth, where lie entered on board a man-owar on the point of sailing on a long voyage, very far distant from home, and as he changed his name and disguised his person, his melancholy his- tcry never was discovered
 After few years of service, during which his exemplary conduct was the cause of his promotion through the lower grades, he was at last made masters
 mate, and his ship being paid off in the West Indies, he, with few more of the crew, were transferred to another ship of war that had recently arrived out tfere short of hands What were his feelings of astonishment and then of de- light and ecstasy, can be imagined when almost the first person he saw on board his new ship was the identical boatswain for whose murder he had been tried con- domned and executed five years before. Nor was the surprise to the old boats- vain much less when he was told of the whole tragedy from first to last.
 It turned out in the explanation of this most extraordinary incident that the boatswain had been bled for pain in the side by arber-surgeon, unknown
 to his niece, on the day of the young
 mans arrival at Deal; and when the young man awakened him and left his bed to go to the garden, he found the bandage had come off his arm during the night, and that the vein had been and was then bleeding afresh. Being alarmed he rose up to go to the barber, who lived across the street, but most unluckily a proving i press gang bounced upon him just at the l instant he was going to leave the door of the public-house. Without giving him time to return to his niece, he was hur- ried to the quay, boat was waiting and i ready to push off belonging to a frigate then under weigh for the East Indies. He was soon placed on board and in a little time the ship passed the South Foreland, and the fact of his departure in this way was altogether unknown.
 Communications by letter with sailors was a practice then unheard of so the people were frequently at loss to ac- count for the absence of friends. The press-gang, by means of which the British navy was then almost entirely manned,
 was familiar and much hated institu-
 tion. Thus the disappearance of the boats
 vain is accounted for and thus were
 the circumstances explained by the two
 parties so unexpectedly thrown together.
 The silver coin found in the pocket or
 the young man was supposed to have got
 there when the boatswain gave him the
 knife in the dark and to have been in
 his pocket with the knife having be-
 come wedged between the blade and han Idle; in this manner it became an c--i- dence against him at his trial.
 On the return of the pair to England this wonderful explanation was told the judge and jury who tried the case, and it is probable they never afterwards con- victed a man on circumstantial evidence. | When the extraordinary denoument be- came known, it made a great noise in Kent, for the case had caused pro- found sensation, not only in Deal, but throughout all the surrounding country. !!
 Thus ended my old salts tale, the de- tails of which prove, even as he said, to be d. matter of record. It must be one Il of the most extraordinary instances known of the unreliability of circumstan-