A man has appeared in court charged with the murder of a 33-year-old woman on New Year’s Day.

Charlotte Huggins became the first person to be killed in London in 2019 when she was allegedly stabbed to death in Camberwell in the south-east of the capital early on 1 January.

Michael Rolle, 34, of Dulwich, south-east London, spoke only to confirm his details when he appeared at Camberwell Green magistrates court on Saturday morning.

Huggins was found at a property in John Ruskin Street at about 4.20am. Paramedics tried to save her, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

A postmortem showed she sustained a single stab wound.

Friends paid tribute on her Facebook page, describing Huggins as “one of the truly decent people” and “a lovely, bubbly, happy, beautiful girl with a pure soul”.