Three tragedies have been under investigation this week. We must
not say anything about the " Eltham Murder " or the "Bayewater Tragedy" until the verdict is given, but, we suppose we may be permitted to congratulate Lord Justice Bovill and the Solicitor-General on the sanitary properties of the Central Criminal Court. They are both in perfect condition again, and snapping at one another with more than usual vigour. The third sensa- tional case, the death of Mr. and Mrs.-Feast, or Preston, of Ilford, has ended in an open verdict. This man, a cashier on the Great Eastern Railway, recently received a legacy, and being a hard
drinker, went in for a debauch. His wife was a hard drinker too, and after the house had been closed for week it was entered, and the man found dead with his head smashed in, and the wife dying and drunk. Two little children, one a girl of ten, called in the neighbourhood from her intelli- gence " the little housekeeper," either could not or would not give any information, and it is supposed, on a very incoherent statement by the woman, that Feast smashed his head against the fender or a knob in the bed. His money was gone, however, and there is still a mystery about the case, though it seems clear that the wife, who was bedridden, could not have killed the hus- band, and that the children did not. The wife just before dying volunteered the statement that they often spent thirty shillings a day in drink, say at least five bottles of brandy, a statement which will be credited only by physicians who have come across true dipsomania. The Lancet, we imagine, could quote cases much more astounding than this.
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