MRS PAUMIER

APPROACHED BY A MAN

Mrs. Paumier was, she told a journalist, selling roasted chesnuts in Widegate Street, a narrow thoroughfare that connects Sandys Row with Middlesex Street, when a very strange man came up to her.

The South Wales Daily News provided the following account of the encounter:-

THE FIEND DESCRIBED

A Mrs Paumier, a young woman who sells roasted chestnuts at the corner of Widegate-street, a narrow thoroughfare about two minutes walk from the scene of the murder, told a reporter of the Press Association this afternoon a story which appears to afford a clue to the murderer.

She said that about 12 o'clock this morning, a man dressed like a gentleman came to her and said, "I suppose you have heard about the murder in Dorset-str8et." She replied that she had, whereupon the man grinned, and said, "I know more about it than you." He then stared into her face and went down Sandys-row, a narrow thoroughfare which cuts across Widegate-street.

When he had got some way off, however, he looked back as if to see whether she was watching him, and then vanished.

Mrs Paumier said that the man had a black moustache, was about five feet six inches high, and wore a black silk hat, a black coat, and specked trousers. He also carried a black shiny bag, about a foot in depth and a foot and a half in length.

Mrs Paumier states further that the same man accosted three young unfortunates whom she knows on Thursday night, and they chaffed him, and asked what he had in the bag, and he replied, "Something that the ladies don't like."

Mrs Paumier told her story with every appearance of truthfulness."

Source: South Wales Daily News, Saturday, 10th November, 1888.