TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN NELSON GAOL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3755, 28 July 1883, Page 3

TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN NELSON GAOL.

A PRISONER SHOOTS A WARDER, AND THEN KILLS HIMSELF. Nelson, This day.

Between G and G. 30 this morning- a most dreadful tragedy was enacted at Nelson gaol. At present it is impossible to gather all the particulars, but it appears that the only warder in charge, John Adams,_must have allowed John Davidson, a prisoner serving a life sontence for the manslaughter of Dennis Quinlan at Lyell, to leave his cell, probably to enable him to go to work in the kitchen. Davidson appears to have been looked on as a very quiet man, for, though special precautions were taken with him after he was sentenced, he seems to have been so docile as to have averted any apprehensions of his becoming violent. Adams, after tho liberation of the prisoner, went into the yard, and then came the dreadful deed. The prisoner was left without control, and, probably seized with a desire to escape, he seems to have taken a tomahawk and smashed in the guard-room door. That done, ho seized a couple of loaded revolvers, and with one hastened to the yard where poor Adams was and to have shot him through the head. Of course the deed was unwitnessed, but from the surrounding circumstances it would appear to bo the course pursued. Tho noise of the revolver awakened Mr Shallcross, the gaoler, and Mrs Shallcross, and both, having but an indistinct idea that there was something wrong, hastened into the _ gaol. In the corridor they were met by Davidson, with two revolvers, which ho was presenting. The gaoler spoke to the man firmly but kindly, to induce him. to retire. Mrs Shallcross asked him where Adams was. To this the prisoner said, " Oh, yes, he's in the yard nil right." Mrs ShallcrosH then entreated him to lay aside the weapons, and he parleyed for a considerable time, and appeared to be somewhat pacified. He then demanded of Mr Shallcross that he should let him pass and escape from tho gnol, but, thovig-h unarmed, the gaoler opposed him. Davidson then spoke of tho Lyell murder, making a charge against the woman concerned therein, and asserting his own innocence, and while Mr and Mrs Shallcross were doing all they could to pacify him the man put one of the revolvers in his mouth, in an instant fired, and was dead. Adams came here from Wellington recently, and had a wife and four children, the youngest two months old.