The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1867-06-22 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

SHOCKING MURDER OF A WOMAN IN KENT. On Saturday an imciestwas held at Trosley, situate a •hortdiutancefrnmthm.inr.uelletwreji Maidetoneand Sevenoaks, and &salt midway between those places, on the body of an unknown woman which had been found in a small coppice at the side of the road, and from the appearance of the body and its surroundings it was evident that a brutal murdir had been committed and that it had been preceded by outrage.  It appeared that two labourers, who hail to pass the place daily to their work, had their attention drawn about • week ago to a very offensive smell, hut they took no notice of It, thinking that it proceeded from some dead menial. On Thursday. in last week, however, it had become so offensive that they decided upon visiting the coppice together in the evening to end out the origin of the smell, and at a short distance within the coppice they found the body of. woman, apparently about forty years of fore, lying upon her hack The head and face were completely enveloped in A shawl which was tied tightly round her throat, and fastened by two knots in the front, the ends being turned ti. The police were at once comrunideatO with, and on the following day a more minute inspee inn of the place was male, MU in consequence of the large numher of persons who had visited it, the imily not having then being removed, all traces of a struggle which one of the men who found the hotly said had appeared to have taken place at that particular spot, were trodden out. Inn me grass about & dozen yards from the body there were evident signs of a struggle. And there a constable picked up a quantity of hair which was summed to have been pulled out of a man's whiskers by the roots. The aurgeon who AAA eSainitled sabl that it would have been useless for hint to have made a post-mortem examination of the baly, as decomposition was so for advanced that bruises or marks of violence, It there had been any, could not have been detected. Ho supposed that the body had been lying there fors fortnight at the least, and his opinion was that death was caused by suffocation. It was in the hounds if possibility for the Ann.!. herself to have tied the shawl, but it vies exceedingly improbable. A woman, whose appearance corresponded with the deceased, was seen in the neighbourlioA) about three weeks before hawking entail wares, and about that time a 67 found a small box contain. bug a few such articles in a ditch close hy where the body was found, FA that the date of the occurrence can be arrived at with clue degree of certainty.  - • The jury returned an open verdict of "Found dead."  The police have since apprehended a labourer on suspicion of having been the perpetrator of the horrible deed, and he was taken before one of the co :nty magistrates on Tuesday, the evidence against him being of the gravest Aaracter. On the 27th May, about which time it is supposed the murder was committed, the prisoner was seen at a very short distance from a woman whose appearance was said by one of the witnesses to correspond with the body found, who was sitting on a bank at the side of the niol leading to the shaw in which the Crime was completed. The prisoner, who did not at all seem to feel the position in which he was placed, was remanded for a week.