LONELY INN MURDER.

Jack Hewitt, the 15-year-old farm labourer, was placed on his trial at the Oxfordshire Assizes yesterday before Mr. Justice Shearman for the wilful murder of Sarah Ann Blake, at the Crown and Anchor Inn, Gallows Tree Common, near Henley. The case for the prosecution was conducted by Mr. J. E. Matthews and Mr. G. Milward, and the accused was defended by Mr Thomas Gates and Mr. A E Godson. Hewitt pleaded not guilty.

The defence took objection to the admission of certain evidence, including a signed statement made by Hewitt on March 28, on the ground that no caution was administered to the boy by the police when he was virtually in custody. Evidence was giver by the police on the point, and the judge ruled that all the evidence was admissible.

Mr. Matthews, opening the case for the Crown, said the murdered woman led a very solitary life. Her only close friendship was with Mrs. Payne, her next-door neighbour. Mrs. Blake was going away on business on March 3, and Mrs. Payne had undertaken to look after the Crown and Anchor in her absence that day. When that morning Mrs. Payne went to the inn she knocked, but did not get a reply. She opened the door, and was faced with the spectacle of Mrs. Blake lying dead on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood, with blood splashed all over the place. On her face and chest and arm ware no fewer than sixty-four distinct wounds and bruises, including four fractures of the skull. What probably caused her death was a tremendous gash in her throat. On the evening of March 2 Hewitt was seen in the Crown and Anchor at about six o’clock. At about seven o’clock he was sent by his mother to the Crown and Anchor to fetch beer. He came back with beer which he said he bought at the “Reformation,” as Mrs. Blake’s inn was in darkness. From the evidence, said counsel, the jury would be asked to infer that Mrs. Blake was murdered a little before half-past seven that evening. On March 7 and 9 the boy was observed looking intently into a hedge near the inn, and on March 14 a knife covered with blood and hair from the dead woman’s head was found in the hedge. The knife would be identified as belonging to Hewitt. Subsequently, after he had been cautioned, the boy on April 4 made a signed statement, in which he said:

I picked up a piece of iron and hit her with it, and there was a struggle. The lamp was knocked over and the glass broken. I do not remember what happened after that. There was blood on my hands. I went out of the house, locked the street door, and went towards home. I threw my knife, which had bloodstains on it, into the hedge and threw the keys into the garden. I do not know where I threw the piece of iron. I am very sorry it happened, and do not know what made me do it.