SHOCKING MURDER BY A WIFE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3830, 25 October 1883, Page 4

SHOCKING MURDER BY A WIFE.

(Ballarat Courier.)

The quiet' little hamlet of Morrisons, which is situated about five miles from Elaine was shocked on Wednesday morning, 20th September, by the intelligence that a miner named Jacob Silk, who has resided in that place for nearly twenty years, had been murdered in his own house. The particulars reveal hideous, and, it is almost unquestioned, maniacal barbarity. Silk's mate, a miner named Benjamin Latter, called for him, according to custom, on Wednesday morning, about S o'clock, and encountered Mrs Silk at the door of her house. On his enquiring for Silk, sho intimated that ho was inside, and motioned to Latter to go in. He did so, and saw the body of her husband lying on the floor covered with blood, and quite cold and stiff. After a few words with Mrs Silk as to the manner in which her husband was killed, he told her not to interfere with anything, and wont and informed the police. There is every reason to believe that the unfortunate man was murdered by his wife. Mrs Silk who is a native of Limerick, is about 50 years of age. She has by no means a prepossessing face, her features being remarkably heavy, and their expression stolid to a degree. Sho is said by those who know her to have been very agreeable when sober, and when both she and hor husband were unaffected by drink they lived together very comfortably, and were considered good neighbors. The daughter is nut by any means an ill-looking girl, but she has the phlegmatic face of her mother, and is stupid. After a quarrel with a man on Friday, whom ho threatened to shoot, Silk went to bis homo nt G o'clock. From that time he was not seen alive outside his own house. A neighbour, who lives about 120 yards from Silk's states that about 8 o'clock ho heard a dull thumping in Silk's house, and remarked to his wife that " Jacob was smashing the boxes with the axe again." He says it was customary for Silk, when he was drunk, to break up the boxes in the house with an axe. At this timo tho daughter was observed going in tho direction of Motor's hotel, and it is surmised that it was at this period tho ill-fated man was battered to death. From tho circumstantial evidence, it would appear that Silk, after going into the house, was sitting on a low stool by the fire, and that his wifo then Struck him with a sharp adze. This is apparent from the blood stains on the wall, which scorn to havo spurted against tho canvas rather than to havo been sprinkled on it. Silk seems to have made a dash either for the door or his gun, which were both at one end of the room, distant from the fireplace. Hero he was struck down and literally chopped to death. No fewer than eleven wounds were couutcd by the doctor on his head, eight having been caused with the head of the adze, and three with the bade of it. The front of his head was chopped out, the floor where ho fell being covered with blood, brains, and pieces of bone. It was no common fury which nerved the arm that smote him, for the blows must have been very heavy. AVhat wero the exact incidents of that horrible butchery will probably never be known, as the woman has already given so many different statements of the affair that it will bo impossible to accurately arrange the data. (She probably was the only one present besides the victim, and tho only assertion sho does mako worth credence is that she killed her husband.