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BIRD AS AID TO JUSTICE Few readers probably of Mr Eden Phillpotts Sam of Sorrow Corner know that the main In ¬ cident on which the plot of the story is based the discovery of the murder of a little girl through the finding of some of her hair in a birds nest is taken from real life lifeThe The tragedy happened in Devonshire many years ago but the memory of it still lingers amongst the peasantry there and Mr Phillpotts has merely re ¬ produced the essential details in the form of fic ¬ tion tionNor Nor is the above the only case where birds have unwittingly aided justice Not many years since there occurred near Vienna a murder that for dia ¬ bolical cunning and ingenuity is probably unparal ¬ leled in the annals of crime Several members of a family of agriculturists named Szenzi died after eating mushrooms gathered fronr their own private bed At first it was considered to be a case of ordinary ptomaine poisoning but a day or two later some fowls that had been scratching and pecking alxMit the mushroom bed also died mysteriously Tills coincidence aroused suspicion and investigation showed that a certain poisonous fungus closely resembling mushrooms in appearance had been planted there thereThe The deed was traced to a neighbor named Fronschi whose daughter Pauline was a servant in the Szcazi household the crime having its origin in a love affair between the girl and one of her em ¬ ployers sons The latter had jilted the girl and her father took this uniiine and terrible method in order to l c revenged for the slight put upon his daughter daughterFowls Fowls also played an important pfrt in securing the conviction of another poisoner Richard Brink ley who murdered two people in 1907 by giving them stout in which he had previously placed a quantity of prussic acid The defense pleaded that the affair was an accident but the prosecution proved that Brinkley had previously experimented on chickens with the same poison first dosing the birds and then dissecting their bodies in order to find out the effects of the poison on their internal organs He was found guilty and duly hanged hangedA A canary was the means of bringing to justice a Frenchman named Freycinet who murdered his sweetheart by mixing morphine with her coffee While the girl was lying unconscious he plastered up the crevices in the window with brown paper then he turned the gas full on and left the room After a brief interval too brief as it turned out he called her maid saying he had just returned and had found the room full of gas and madame lying on the bed apparently dead She has com ¬ mitted suicide by poisoning herself with coal gas he said In that case retorted the maid it is strange that madames canary is not also dead and she pointed to the bird which although evi ¬ dently distressed was hopping and fluttering about iu its cage near the window which by now Frey cinot had thrown open In n moment tjie murderer realized his mistake a mistaise that was presently to cost him his life Tid Bibi
