Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 11761, 11 January 1906, Page 7
A WOMAN’S SECRET.
A unique case in the annals of personation has just been disclosed in the North of England, in which a woman who posed as a man deliberately sacrificed her life in order to preserve her secret. George Gillson, smartly dressed in a tweed suit, was arrested at Burnley, in Lancashire, on a charge of obtaining a guinea by false pretences from a Stockton solicitor. The captors had not the vaguest idea that Gillson was not a man, nor did the constable who accompanied the prisoner harbour any suspicions that his charge was a woman. Just before reaching Stockton station the express in which the policeman and his captive traveled slowed down and as it did so Gillson sprang for the door, opened it, and leaped out. The constable made a grab for the fugitive’s legs and, catching hold of her ankle, was jerked out of the carriage on to the sixfoot way. Both fell heavily, but, recovering in a moment, the female prisoner leaped to her feet and deliberately dived under the moving train. The constable pulled her out, but not before one of her legs had been badly mutilated. Gillson, however, kicked him in the face with her sound foot, and, breaking from his grip, again threw herself under the train, which passed over her lower limbs, inflicting injuries which soon proved fatal. The betrayal of the unfortunate woman’s secret came about at the inquest, where the doctor called to make the post mortem examination told the Court that the body of the supposed young man was that of a well-developed woman of five and twenty years of age. It transpired that while the woman’s antecedents were more or less of a mystery, she had for several years made a good living by masquerading as a man and defrauding people by representing herself as an insurance agent. Traces of her have been found in all sorts of places, many of her victims having been solicitors and commercial men of high standing in business. She had destroyed everything that might have led to her identification prior to being arrested. Her favourite method of fraud was to secure the renewal of insurance premiums, and she went about this business with such confidence that she very seldom failed to effect her purpose. Her determination was evidenced by the deliberate manner of her death, and she is said to have displayed talents which, had they been put to a proper use, would have assured her a comfortable living.
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