A FEARFUL TRAGEDY.

Evening Star, Issue 2981, 7 September 1872, Page 3

A FEARFUL TRAGEDY.

At four o’clock on the morning of the 20th a woman named Mary Donoghue, aged thirtytwo, murdered another unfortunate, named Mary O’Rorke, alias Hewcston, who lived with her in Bourke street, Melbourne. Referring to the murder, the Ary us says: Abandoned women who live in the lanes and blind alleys off Little Bourke street east are continually quarrelling and injuring each other, and probably it was the mere accident of so deadly a weapon being ready to the hand of O’Donoghue at the moment of her drunken fury that caused so tragic a termination to the debauch, which would in ordinary cast s, have only resulted In one or both of the parties having to go to the hospital. It may seem strange that the affair was not sooner brought te light, but from all that can be learned no blame attaches to the police. The three women had drink on Monday at midnight. One, being sick, retired to bed at 4 o’clock in the morning : the others drank till they were more or less intoxicated ; a quarrel and one felled the other with the instrument which came first to hand. Finding what she had done, the guilty woman attacked her victim afresh, to make her silence sure, and then kept the body concealed during the whole of the day, w'hich was just beginning to dawn, trying to drown thought and keep the third woman from going into the room where the body was looked up by bringing in more drink. Having got the third woman out of the house at night, she found she could not stop alone with the corpse ; and flaring from the scene, told her crime to the first policeman she met. No doubt, had she sought to conceal it longer, other women or some of the male “bullies” who frequent these houses would have made the discovery and informed the police ; or the neighbors, missing the murdered woman, would have roused the suspicions of a constable in the vicinity by talking of bey disappearance.