EXTRAORDINARY WIFE MURDER AT THE CAPE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 37, 13 July 1874, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY WIFE MURDER AT THE CAPE.

[From the Cape “ Argus.”] Truth is stranger than fiction. If Mr G. W. M. Reynolds, or, for that matter, even Miss Braddou were to have, from his or her fertile brains, invented the succession of sensational incidents and coincidences which terminated with the verdict and the sentence pronounced in the Supreme Court late last night, no sane person could have given credence to the story as being in the least degree within the bounds of human probability. Let us glance for a moment at these incidents and coincidences as they stand forth in all their tragic reality. Three years ago two sons of one of the most estimable and honorable men that ever lived in Africa, killed their respective wives—the one in Fort Beaufort, at the eastern end of the colony, the other in the Caledon district, near the extreme west; and both events within something like three days of each other. The homicides were not like the common herd of vulgar felons. One was an accomplished physician, the other was a gentleman farmer. The former, by a piece of marvellous good luck, escaped with his life, and was condemned only to life-long exile on Robben Island, where, during these three years, he and his story have lapsed into the oblivion from which we have no desire to raise them. The case of the other brother sentenced last night was, if possible, still more horrible and painful. He had been married for several years to a beautiful wife, and had a numerous family of children by her. Domestic jars, jealousies, and quarrels seem to have been the rule rather than the exception of their married history—until finally on this fatal 20th of March, 1871, on the farm of Ratel River, and under the circumstances described in the evidence, the shot was fired which killed Mrs Breda. Then came dark rumours and sinister reports bruited forth in all directions of foul play—followed by an official inquiry,which appeared to be fairly conducted, but which satisfied no one except the accused —though meanwhile, during three years succeeding, the whole tragic transaction was bidding fair to subside into absolute forgetfulness. Three months ago a perfectly accidental dispute between Mr Breda and one of his servants raised in the most accidental way a legal point of considerable delicacy, though by'itself of no grave importance, but which had to be argued before the Supreme Court. This in its turn led to fresh revelations —no doubt given at first from bad motives—by one of the servants respecting the death of Mrs Breda ; and these again in turn to others —from a comparison and consideration of all which the Attorney-General felt himself in duty bound to indict the prisoner, and put him on his trial for his life. By a strange, though utterly undersigned coincidence, the day appointed for the trial, Tuesday last, was the anniversary of the birthday of the prisoner’s venerable and honoured father ; and many a man that day thanked God that the worthy gentleman reposed quietly in his grave, amid the pines of Orange Zigt, rather than be alive to witness the fearfuf humiliation of his namesake son. But even this was not all—the most terrible incident of the whole story became revealed the day before. Up to Monday morning last the evidence was such that, with the able counsel retained for the defence, there was a reasonable probability of an acquittal being secured. But on that Monday morning, the loading witness for the defence turned round and confessed that she could no longer lie and perjure herself, as she had done before, even to vindicate her father. Bite gave voluntary depositions which proved most

damning against him; and one of the most ' painfully tragic scenes ever witnessed in a court of justice was that displayed on Tuesday afternoon, when Mrs Lourens, a mere girlwife of 16 years of .age, and married only a fortnight ago, gave evidence of the most fatal character against her own father, with a calmness of manner which could only be the result of the most highly-wrought tension of her nervous system—a tension from which she got relief only when, on her retirement to the witness-room, she fainted clean away. Whether we believe the girl to be truthful now, or whether we believe her to be a liar, trebly dyed, the picture is very horrible to contemplate—a daughter in the witness-box swearing away her father’s life, whatever his faults, aye 1 his crimes. She does not come straight from her mother’s death bed to denounce her mother’s murderer, father though he be, but after waiting month after month, and year after year, bargaining for her future through dreadful trials of lying and deceit. A dreadful scene, too, for a father to see a daughter deliberately describing, whether truthful or not, herself a perjurer at his instigation, and standing there the chief witness that he was a murderer. Look from the pale-faced girl hardly yet a woman, although a wife, with her flashing dark eyes, sitting as she does, calmly telling the horrible talc with a self-com-posure and readiness of reply that baffles even the skill of the cleverest cross-examiner in this land, to the dark-bearded man in the dock, whose piercing dark gray eyes lour steadily and seemingly angrily on his child, who is to-day of all the world hi? greatest enemy ; and the story remains none the less horrible with the eyes resting on father or daughter—for a father to have such a daughter, or for a daughter to have a father so passionate, so mad in his auger, so desperate in his rage. A more heartrending tragedy of domestic life has never been known in the annals of our Law Courts, and the verdict given last night must have caused many sighs of relief and eased many a conscience. . . , To add yet more to the strange list of startling coincidences, there was the marvellous fact that the prisoner in the dock was even then engaged to the sister of the mau who was the husband of his own daughter then so terribly convicting him, . . . In our opinion a verdict of “ Guilty for Murder” would have been unjustifiable without the extremes! stretching alike of the evidence and of the law. Acquittal would be impossible without an utter violation of justice. The third conceivably possible return of mere common assault waa out of the question. That homicide had been committed was beyond a doubt, and that there was culpability about it was equally so ; and that the prisoner should have been recommended to mercy was, under all the circumstances of the case, equally generous and just. To that recommendation the Chief Justice gave the fullest possible effect; and in the sentence pronounced by his lordship of five years’ imprisonment with hard labor, we believe that the vast assemblage which crowded the Court in every corner concurred moat thoroughly, as a judgment which mingled mercy and justice to the utmost extent that any reasonable human being could desire. We have profound pity for the condemned prisoner, whose ungovernable temper brought him into the misery to which he is now consigned. We have still profound compassion for his respected relatives who are involved with him in a -oramon, if not even a deeper sorrow.