Widnes Examiner. — 1890-11-29 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

THE BOLTON TRAGEDY.  RESUMED INQUEST. Mr. S. F. Butcher, coroner for the district, resumed his inquiry on Saturday into the death of Miss Holt, the young schoolmistress who was murdered in Longworth Wood, near Bolton. A startling piece of evidence was given by the aunt of the prisoner. Hitherto Macdonald's connection with the crime has been assumed from purely ' circumstantial evidence. Every known fact pointed to him as the murderer, but the testimony was by no means complete. Honor Bann, the aunt of the prisoner, makes the case strong against him. Macdonald himself has, she says, confessed to her that he murdered the poor girl. Miss Bann's position is peculiarly pathetic. She is an old woman, an unmarried sister of the prisoner's mother, aud has spent a long life in the mill. Macdonald has been the burden and care of her life. From infancy  she has maintained him—except during one long spell of his imprisonment—on her hard-won pittance. He has been her one source of unhappiness and anxiety. Through this last crime of her nephew she is out of work arid, one might also add, out of home, and for the present is treated as a social Pariah. • Since Macdonald's arrest her fellow workers at Egerton Mills have declined to have her amongst them. , They blame her for having harboured the son of her dead sister, knowing his worthless and dangerous character. Everyone who saw the weeping, kindly looking old woman on Saturday felt pity for the unfortunate creature. In the early part of her evidence she broke down, cried bitterly, and looking at the prisoner, cried "Oh, Tom! oh, Tom !" Macdonald was the one callous man in Court. With something of contempt he looked at her, asked" What's the matter ?" and told her to go outside and calm herself. A few seconds later he more than taken aback, while the Court was thrilled,  by the first direct piece of evidence yet given. She composed herself, wiped her eyes, and then, in Lancashire phrase, unburde,ed herself of a terrible secret. "It's no uselapping it up," said she, and thereupon she told through her sobs the prisoner's confession to her of guilt. On the day of the murder he came to her at the mill and asked her to come out because someone had come from America. She went out, and then he made confession that he had murdered Lizzie Holt. He spoke of giving himself up; she in bitterness advised him to go and I drown himself. Then followed the five days of quietness, during which the mother thought Lizzie was at school and the school master imagined her at home, her body being all the time under the three oak trees in the wood. Honor Bann says she asked no questions of Macdonald during those days. She seems to have half hoped that his confession was untrue, but was yet afraid that her fears might be confirmed, as they sadly were. While the old ,woman told her story the prisoner listened with .a -flushed face, and subsequeritty-ne erassx...t.ad-herja a quick, nervous way. He suggested to her that ne had told her a different tale, to the effect that he heard screams in the wood and that someone else had committed a murder; but Miss Bann was firm in what she had before said. The other evidence given during the day showed that Macdonald closely followed Miss Holt on the morning Qf the murder. Most of the afternoon was occupied with the statement of Dr. Robinson, the import of which has already been published. The Court sat from ten in the morning till six at night, and the inquiry was then adjourned.