The Home Office have offered a reward of £250 and
a free pardon to any one who, not being actually concerned in the murder, will give any trustworthy evidence as to the cause of Mr. Charles Bravo's death. It is not likely that such an offer will produce any testimony, and the case might be considered at an end, but for the kind of one-legged controversy still going on in the newspapers. As everybody can say anything he pleases in support of the theory of suicide, and nobody can say anything in support of the theory of murder, that controversy is not a useful one. "A Field Officer," who writes to the Times, is as yet the strongest witness in favour of suicide. He says that in India he tried to kill himself with laudanum, and repenting im- mediately after, took a great dose of antimony, but never men- tioned it, not knowing tartar emetic to be poisonous. He thinks Mr. Bravo may have done the same thing, and forgets that there is no evidence of a great dose of laudanum, no evidence that Mr. Bravo had any antimony, and no independent evidence that he had any reason for taking either the one or the other. Jealousy was suggested as the reason, but a jealous man does not leave his whole property to his wife, and with almost his last breath entreat his mother to be kind to her. It is in misadventure of a strange kind, not in suicide, that the alternative theory to murder should be sought. That vein has not been fairly worked.
Previous page
