Separated from her husband and living alone in Magdalene Road, Oxford, Mrs. Lucy Strange, 40, was battered to death with a pair of fire tongs in her home on Friday, APRIL 23rd, 1915.
The last man to see her alive was a local labourer, Alfred Holland, 24. He admitted having seen her, but claimed that she was seeing a mutual acquaintance named Jack, a Londoner. Jack, he said, had told him that he was going to kill Mrs. Strange for being unfaithful to him.
Jack, however, had mysteriously disappeared, and so Alfred Holland was brought to trial for the murder. After a three-day hearing at Oxford Assizes he was acquitted for lack of evidence.