p. 13 | PERSONAL IDENTITY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 18, 1899

PERSONAL IDENTITY.

THERE is probably not in fact a more marvelous story of mistaken identity than that in the case of the recent Bridgeport, Mass., tragedy. Neither Poe nor any of his imitators, from Gaboriau to Conan Doyle, has been able to fabricate anything to compare with it.

A girl's mutilated body was found in the water. Two men just at that time were anxiously searching each for a missing daughter.

Both examined the murdered girl's head minutely. Each swore positively that it was the head of his missing daughter.

One of them, the father of missing Marion Grace Perkins, not only recognized a photograph of the dead girl's head, but described a minute mark that would be found over the right eye if the corpse was really that of his daughter. Nobody had observed any such mark, but upon examination it was found precisely where he had said.

The body was delivered to Mr. Perkins, who started home with it for burial.

Then Marion Grace Perkins arrived at home alive and well, passing on the way from the station the open grave that had been prepared to receive her, and meeting at her father's door the undertaker's wagon.

The missing daughter of the other identifier has also turned up in full vigor of life.

The annals of the law are full of strange cases of mistaken identity. But we can not recall one which so strongly illustrates as this one does the difficulty of personal identification and the danger of trusting to it where crime is concerned and human life imperiled. It would be easy to hang an innocent person upon testimony greatly weaker than that which proved so mistaken in this case.—Thrice-a-week World.