They are Working Hard to Convict Saunderson
PROMINENT FAMILIES INVOLVED
London, Dec. 5.
The detectives of Scotland yard are busily at work ferreting out the bottom facts in the sensational murder mystery which involves, indirectly, a number of the most aristocratic families in Great Britain, through the arrest of young Saunderson.
In November the body of a comely, well dressed young woman, about 30 years of age, named Dawes, was found in a much frequented thoroughfare, Holland Villas Road, Kensington. A hasty examination of the body showed that her throat had been cut from ear to ear. The police at first were completely at fault and some of the London newspapers raised the old cry of Jack the Ripper, although there was little or no ground for doing so. A knife and stick at her side finally were identified as belonging to Saunderson and led to his arrest.
The young man is a nephew of the famous Colonel Edward J. Saunderson, the Orange leader, member of Parliament for North Armagh, a magistrate and a deputy lieutenant and the son of Llewellyn Trahne Basset Saunderson Esq., a justice of the peace of Dublin county, Ireland, who married Lady Rachael Mary Scott, third sister of the earl of Clonmell, a retired lieutenant colonel of the British army in the Ashantee war. Reginald Saunderson's family are well known and highly respected in and about Dublin. One of Reginald Saunderson's aunts is Lady Edith Caroline Monck, wife of the Hon. Henry Power Charles Stanley Monck, eldest son of the fourth Viscount Monck. Another of his aunts is Lady Maria Henrietta Fitzclarence, whose husband is a brother of the Earl of Munster and a grandson of William IV.
The young man, it appears, is only 21 years old, tall and handsome, a most pleasant conversationalist and an expert at football, rowing and swimming. But, although so prominent in other ways, young Saunderson was far from being strong-minded. In fact, gradually, his condition of mind caused his relatives and friends so much distress that he was sent to a school for the protection and education of gentlemen of weak intellect, at Hampton Wick, near Kingston upon the Thames, England. Saunderson, according to the police, left that institute Nov. 25, saying that he intended to attend divine service at a local church.
But he was not heard of again until he appeared at the house of his relatives at Belfast, some time after the murder.
For months past the English papers have been devoting much space to the trial of a young man named James Canham Read, hanged yesterday, a married man, at one time employed as a clerk at the London docks, who was charged with the murder at Southend, England, on June 24 last, of a young women, Florence Dennis, with whom he had been on intimate terms.
Saunderson, it seems, was deeply impressed by the accounts of the trial which he read in the newspapers. He would eagerly peruse everything published on the subject and seemed to brood over the case. So much so, that the attention of all his associates was attracted when his disappearance became known, the police were notified, and as they were already on the lookout for some such person on suspicion of murdering the unfortunate in the Holland Villas Road, the knife and stick found by her were taken to the institution at Hampton Wick, and were there recognized as being the property of the missing man.
Nothing then remained but to effect capture of Reginald Saunderson, and the homes of his relatives in Ireland were closely watched.
The police, it seems, first got on the track of Saunderson in Belfast and took him into custody. But, while the prisoner was being conveyed to Dublin, en route to London, he succeeded in escaping from his captors who then had to begin their search for him again almost at the point they started from.
The police, however, came upon his trail once more and again took him into custody. Saunderson was arrested for the second time at Killeshandra, near Armagh. The prisoner was fashionably dressed and was conveyed under strong escort to Armagh, previous to being brought here. Saunderson was formally arraigned and was remanded for a week, pending the completion of the police case against him and in order to enable the prisoner's friends to secure counsel for his defense.
