The Shropshire Examiner and all round the Wrekin advertiser. — 1876-05-05 (Wenlock, Shropshire, England)

STORY OF THE SEA.  A New York paper has the following :--Mrs. Jersey is at the bottom of the Atlantic, her demented husband is chattering to himself in the sunshine up in Rock• land county, Dr. Hammond is dead by his own hand, and a- strangely-assorted man and wife, the daughter of the murdered woman and the son of the man who probably killed her, are left to explain to their curious neighbours and a host of detectives a drama they do not understand. No more startling story of the sea has come to hand lately than this frag- • mentary history tif the woman committed to the waves from the steamship Cubs, November 20, last year. Nineteen years ago this woman was a handsome girl of 17, and married a person of "feeble intellect "—that is, a gibbering imbecile—possessed of enough money to be called rich in the country. Last November she left her home, a, d came to this city on her way to Europe, as given out. With her was a frimd of the family, Dr. Hammond, the father of her son-inlaw. Here she drew nearly 10,000 dots. in money, and on the 27th of November she took passage on the steamer for Fernandina, Florida. She seemed to be alone. On the first night out she was ill, and a medical passenger went to the rescue, and gave her a dose of hydrate of chloral. One wontan, with keen feminine instinct, saw the two together, and concluded that, they were not strangers to each other. From the dose of chloral Mrs. Jersey never recovered. All the next day she lay unconscious, breathing stertorously, the brain oppressed so far that death by paralysis of the muscles that carry on the vital machinery was imminent. Had the medical passenger been so disposed he could at Mutest any nuttnent early in that day have saved her life, for stvychnia, the efficient antidote, is in every steamer's medicine chest. He was in her room a great part of the time. She died that. night, was buried almost immediately, and the medical passenger left at the first port they reached, though he had taken pas. sage for another port. With hint went, apparently, the money the woman had drawn from her banker's, as it was not found in her effects, and is not accounted for. Now, the problem of the story is, was this medical passenger on board the ship the Dr. Hammor.d who was with her when she left home for this city? Dr. Hammond returned to his home on' December 10. The steamer left this port on November 2.7, and reached Fernandina in ten days, say December 7. It reached Port Royal the day before, or the second day before, and tbere the medical passenger went ashore. Starting from Port Royal on either the sth or flth, therefore, he had ample time to retch Rockland county hv the 10th. He gave out on his return that he had been to Alabama, which would agree happ..,, if be had been seen on a Southern train by any person that :ew hint. If the medical passenger was Dr. Vainmond, he had every reason to suppose the woman would never again be heard of by her friends. Thev heheve.d her in Europe, and he believed that he had deR' royerl that day in her stateroom fill papers that ..pold ever cite ethic to the identity of the woman so hastily buried M sea. But a solitary envelope had been overlooked, on which was written her daughter's addrets, in Rockland county. That sent the detectives thither. and when thee appeared Dr. Hammond committed suicide. Suicide in such circumstances is confession.  Mr. C. It. Re,e has in rt.heargql, at the Opera CA 1" .r rit the By., al