A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1073, 17 November 1882, Page 4

A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY.

For more than a fortnight after the despatch of mv last budget Berlin bad absolutely nothing to talk about, •«nd the most inveterate gossips were lapsing into chrome 'aciturnitv, when —■unfortunately fo l- his family, hut •somewhat luckily for Inch and-dry •stranded -conversationalists—a demoralised op»ra*ive took it into his head to assassinate his wife and four elid'd ten in a peculiarly brutal manner, some features of the deed being, as far ms T can remember, altogether unprecedented in the history of homicidal •■crime. In falling hack upon this 'hideous atrocity for a topic, at the very dullest season of the year, Tam •only following the example of ninety nine persona out of every 100 constituting the German capital’s population. There are few Teutonic households ■so ill-provided with furniture as not to possess a somewhat large and comprehensive article called a spindle, which, by the way, is a sort of generic term for wardrobe, linen-chest, ar inoire. and other conveniences for the reception and custody of clothes affected to the use of both sexes. It is a deep, moveable closet, abounding in pegs, sometimes flanked on either side by a storied set of drawers, sometimes itself reposing, so to speak, upon ■one huge deep drawer, in which, as a rule, sheets, tablecloths, and counterpanes are laid at ease, whilst appended to the pegs above are coa‘s and waistcoats. gowns and skirts, mantles and -shawls. The last thing anyone accustomed to the arrangemenes of a German “ interior ” would expect to find in such a spindle as I have imperfectly ■described would he three children, of the respective ages of two, four, and five, hanging from as many pegs by nooses of strong packing cord, and as dead as any of the Pharaohs recently discovered by Professor Brnegsch. It must, I think, he admitted that this, -on a father’s part, is an unusual method of disposing of the younger members of his family. With the solitary -exception of Count Ugolino’s expedient for perma’ eutly putting away his sons, I cannot call to mind any parental trearment at once as eccentric in conception and effective in result at this of the ex-tailor, Conrad, who, however, had prefaced it by other proceedings quite as abominable though perhaps a trifie less original, trom a criminal point of view. This is what Conrad had done with his whole family. I should premise that this miscreant has for nearly two years past been steeped in every sort of physical and moral degradation. Tu 1880 he abandoned his wife, a worthy hardworking woman—and four children, the eldest then not quite five ■years old, the youngest a baby in arms, in order to live with and upon the shameful earnings of a notorous prostitute of the lowest order. Frau Conrad contrived to support herself and her children honestly by the labor of her hands, and made no claim upon her vile husband, though knew where he was all the time. He,on the contrary, ft-equently persecuted her with letters, urging her in menacing tones to institute proceedings against him tor a divorce, in order that, ridded of hei and her brats, he might he, free to marry the partner of his infamy. The unhappy woman took no noHce of those communications ; but his threats kept her in a chronic state of apprehension, and only the day before the tragedy above alluded to was enacted she had observed to a friendly neighbor that “ she felt sure Conrad ■ would do her or the children a deadly ■mishap some dav.” Her dismal previsions were only too soon and too horribly realised. Just a fortnight ago Conrad contrived to effect an entrance into his wife’s apartments in the dead of the night. She and the four children were abed and asleep. With hi« meiciless hands—so testify the marks found upon their throats—h<» strangled them one after the other, and then proceeded with utmost deliberateness to hang them up in different parts of the dwelling, his object 1 eing to convey the impression to whosoever might discover the bodies that, his wife had done away with her children first and herse'f afterwards. Accordingly he suspended the eldest -child—a girl of nearly seven to an iron hook screwed to the inside of the bedroom door, the three younger ones do pegs in the wardrobe, the door of which ho closed and locked, and, finally, triced up his wife to the bar upon which the curtains of the bedroom windows were supported. Marwood could not have hanged her, or the children either, for that matter, vmoie artistically. He nnpt have performed the whole series of horrors bp. fwean one and five in the morning, for he has proved two indisputable alibis just before and just after those respective hours. Had he not been too 'clever by half, and so thrust himself into undesirable prominence, tliemur•ders might not have been traced homo to him, or a* least not until sufficient time would have elapsed to rid his hands and wrists of certain damning marks, the results of h : s struggles with his victims, which will deliver him into the bauds of Herr Krauss, the scliarfriohter, as surely as if his inconceivable barbarities had been witnessed by a hundred pairs of human «’ es. In his intense anxiety to divert suspicion fr m himself he actually gave the alarm to his wife’s neighbours and the police, and was the first person, when tho outer door of j

the -apartment was f> reed open, to look for the dead children in the wardrobe. Bein.fi, however, one of those persons described in Herr Vo i Madai’s privy registers as '* unfavorably known to the authorities of the district in which he resides,” the Lieutenant ot Sclmtzleute, who had been summoned to the see eof the murder, and to whom Conrad broke out in passionate la mentations over the cruel fate of his wife and children, instantly caused him to be arrested, conveyed to prison, and stripped, he loudly protesting his innoeence all the while. Upon his neck and shoulder-blades were found scratches, received by him during his struggle with his victims. These abrasions he swears were of his own. doing, ♦ Ire result of scratching hug bites a thought too vigorously. Other injuries to the skin of bis wrists and forearm he attributes to the unnecessary violence with which the police seized and handcuffed him. In short he denies his culpability in the most positive terms. You will be able to form some idea of the sensation caused in every class of society by Conrad’s “ murder most foul and most unnatural” when I tell you that the Emperor, the kindest and most humane of men, having carefully gone through the evidence in the case on the day following the deed, sent an aide-de-camp down to the pri. son in which Conrad is confined to convey “ the King’s orders” to the governor that extraordinary precautions be taken to prevent the escape or suicide of so abominable a monster, it being his Majesty’s settled resolve that Conrad shall he brought to justice. The vile hmfe, accordingly, has been i< moved to the so-called “ murderei’s cell” in the Giant Tower of the Alolj kennmrkt. There he is fettered, hand i and foot, to a thick iron staple limning I across the dungeon and fixed in two ot its walls. His chains are not removed at night even, and so he has 10 sleep in them, much to his discomfort. Only during his meals are the wristrings removed by his gaolers, «ho watch him closely while he eats with a wooden spoon the food that lias been cut up and prepared specially for him. No prisoner in this city has been so heavily and unintermittently chained since the year 1834, when Crothe, Professer Cregh’s assassin, was con fined in the very cell now occupied by Conrad. But for extraordinary galI lantry and endurance exhibited by the police, the ex-tailor would would cer- ( tainly have been lynched during his ; trai sit from the scene of his crime to the Molkenmarkt. The people were wild to get at him ; more than one ■ broken head attested the sincerity of their exasperation. —Berlin Correspondent S.A. Register.