ATTEMPTED MURDER AT THE CHAT HAMS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 593, 21 March 1882, Page 2

ATTEMPTED MURDER AT THE CHAT HAMS.

By the steamer Akaroa, which arrived at Lyttelton on Friday morning, from the Chatham Islands news is received (says the Press) of the following attempted murder there. On the night of March 7th, a carpenter named William Gordon Jacobs the owner of a block of land, fired four shots from a revolver, three with theobect of killing his wife and one at his son. The firing was done from outside the house at which Mrs Jacobs and her boy were staying at the time, and tho first shot hit her on the breast and glanced along, passing through her left, breast and out ur.der the armpit. The direction of the ball was thus turned by coming in contact with the woman's corset. The se ond shot hit the table iv the room, and at that moment Jaco s' boy ran to the door and called, " Don't papa—don't,' when Jacobs turned the pistol towards him and fired, but fortunately missed his son. After sending another ball through the window of the dwelling he decamped. It seems he returned to his own house, and told his.family that their mother and brother Willie were "no more." and that before the morning he himself would be dead. lie next took some cirlridges and a loaf o! bre-id, and started off into the bush, where he was captured the day following by Messers Meore, Todd, aed S-.haiie. Jacobs was brought before the Magistrate and formally committed for trial. He would prcabiy be sent on to Lyttelton in the hrigautiue Omaha. Mrs Jacob-* was attended by Dr. Cooper, and when the steamer left was on a fair way to recovery. The husband and wife had not lived on good terms together for a considerable time previous to Jacobs' attack upon her. She had separated from him a few days previous, and had betaken herself to a neighbor's house, the place the attempt on her life was made. They have a family of eight children, for whom a good deal of sympathy is felt.