London, Mar. 19.
Norman Thorne, a 24 year old farmer, charged with the murder of his sweetheart, Miss Elsi Cameron, a 26 year old Kensal Rise typist, at Crowborough, put up, quite a' good fight. for his lite when last Friday he went into the witness-box in the Assize Court of what happened in the living-hut on -his farm. He demonstrated with a rope how, as he asserts, Miss Cameron hanged herself from a beam, It is the ease for the prosecution that Thorne's love for the typist ad cooled and been supplanted by affection for Elizabeth Caldicott, a Crowborough dressmaker, and the Prosceution has sought to prove that Thorne killed Miss Cameron by blows and dismembered her body. Thorne admits dismembering the body, but says that the girl hanged Ferself in his hut while he had gone out to meet the other woman Mr. J, D. Cassels, K. C,, who bride lantly "defended Thorne, put his ease in the statement that "the defence in this ease is that this was no murder and that Elsie Cameron died from shock in attempting to hang herself, and that the bruises she received just before death were onused by falling, or in the act of being cut down from the point of suspension." In a closely reasoned speech Mr, Cassels referred to Elsie Cameron's nervous condition and called medical evidence to prove that at times at least she had tendencies, It also appears when Miss Cameron's body was ex-liliumed last month the scientists took a portion of the skin from her neck. They contended that if there Was a rope mark, if there was crushing of the tissues beneath the skin of the neck, then one of the most wonderful scientific instruments, the microscope, would aid in its' dis covery.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.