December 7th: Mrs Isaacs as witness

Evening Express, 7^th December, 1893.

The Bath Mystery.

A Cardiff Woman in the Witness-box.

The inquest regarding the mysterious murder of the girl Luke near Bath was resumed at Bathampton on Wednesday. Respecting the report that the man Dill, who found the blood-stained cuffs, was at the George Inn, Bathampton, on Bank Holiday, when Luke disappeared, Police-sergeant Targett was called and proved that Dill was in Devizes Camp at the time.

The principal witness was Mrs. Lucy Isaacs, wife of Frederick Isaacs, French polisher, living at 36, Coburn-street, Cardiff. She deposed that she knew the murdered girl Wilkie for two or three years. She went by all sorts of names. Witness saw her often, and on the last occasion during the week preceding the August Bank Holiday, 1891. On that occasion deceased came to witness’s house at 4, Bryan’s-terrace, Carlton-road, Bath, and said she was going away to get married to Arthur Coombes, but she had said it so many times and they had found her out in so many lies that they did not believe her. She had last seen deceased and Coombes together as late as January 1891. When she saw her the last time at her house just before the Bank Holiday she did not appear then to be enceinte. Witness thus contradicted the general impression and statement of other persons examined that the deceased was enceinte at the time of her murder, and also accounted for her whereabouts for the week preceding her disappearance, which had not been accounted for at the previous examinations.

The jury found that deceased was murdered by some person or persons unknown.