October 10th: again in front of the magistrates

The Times, October 10^th, 1893. 

 The Bath Murder.

Arthur Stevenson Coombs, coachbuilder, the young man charged with the murder of Elsie Adelaide Luke, alias Wilkie, was conveyed from Horfield Prison yesterday morning, and again brought before the Weston bench of magistrates. A number of additional witnesses were called by Mr Cannings Collins, who prosecuted on behalf of the Crown, including those who gave evidence in the Coroner’s court on Friday. The brooch found in prisoner’s house was not positively identified by the deceased’s fellow servant (Annie Cox) as the one that she gave to Wilkie, though the witness believed it to be the same. Cox admitted that she never saw the deceased wearing the brooch, and Mrs Kerry (recalled) said she could not remember seeing her with it at any time.

Annie Poole, wife of a solicitor’s clerk, repeated her evidence as to a scene which the deceased created outside Coombs’s house in June, 1891. She saw Wilkie, closely followed by Coombs, go down Kingsmead-terrace on the Sunday before August Bank Holiday of that year, and that was the last time that she saw her alive. 

Two young men who are personally acquainted with the prisoner said they saw him and the deceased one Sunday morning walking through the wood leading from the Warminster-road to Hampton Down. It was a Sunday morning in July, 1891, and the spot where they were seen was about half a mile from where the body was found. The prisoner was again remanded.