TRAGEDY AT DELORAINE, TASMANIA.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 448, 20 November 1875, Page 3

TRAGEDY AT DELORAINE, TASMANIA.

The Launceston correspondent of the Hobart Town Mercury reports : The account of a horrible murder and suicide at Chudleigh, near Deloraine, which I sent you on Tuesday evening is erroneous in one very important particular, although the dreadful tragedy enacted assumes even a more horrible complexion than before stated. The locality being so far from Launcestcn, I bad no opportunity of gaining thoroughly authentic "particulars, and published the story as it came to me. The error was in my stating that the man Richards had murdered his wife. It now appears that Mrs Richards was murdered by a man named Lambert, in whose hut Richards and his wife were, staying, and that Lambert probably then made an attack on Richards himself, as alter the tragedy Richards was found lying on a bed in the hut in a dying state, and on the bed near him a rod of iron covered with blood was found, this, it is presumed, having been the weapon with which the murderous deed was perpetrated. Lambert, the murderer, then committed suicide by hanging himself to a tree in the locality. From the evidence adduced at the inquest, held on Wednesday, before Mr Henry Douglas, of DJoraine, it appears that the man Lambert had • for a considerable time past occupied a two-roomed hut at Mole Creek, a few miles from Chudleigh, on a small farm belonging to Messrs Field. At different times Lambert has had various

persons living with him, but they generally soon left on account of Lambert's violent and quarrelsome disposition. For some months past a man named Isaac Richards and his wife had been living with Lambert, and Richards had often complained of the difficulty of living with Lambert on account of his violent temperament. On Tuesday last a Mr Hood when passing near the hut had his attention drawn to a man standing, as he thought, on a log fence under a wattle tree, but on nearing the spot he found that the man was suspended to the tree by a rope, and that life was extinct. Hood procured assistance, and the body was cut down and identified as that of the man Lambert The rope by which the body was suspended was an ordinary clothes line, and the body was found to be quite cold, as if it had been suspended some hours. The hut near by being closed suspicions of foul play yet undisclosed were aroused, and those present on proceeding to the hut fouDd that the door was closed, and the building apparently untenanted. On effecting an entrance, however, a horrible sight presented itself. The unfortunate woman Richards lay on the floor with her throat cut from ear to ear and entangled in the bed clothes which were smothered in blood, and the disordered state of the room indicated that a severe struggle had taken place before the murderer had been enabled to effect his fell purpose. Subsequently a further search of the premises was made, and the husband of the woman Richards was found lying insensible on the bed in an inner apartment, in an apparently dying state. There was an iron bar on the bed covered with blood, and with this instrument frightful wounds had been inflicted about the sufferer's head and body, it is presumed by the suicide Lambert. Richards, although subsequently conscious at intervals, was not sufficiently well to be able to give any account of the affair. At the inquest held on Wednesday the jury found that the woman Richards was murdered by Lambert, and that Lambert committed suicide. The man Richards still lives, though in a very precarious state. The same journal of the Bth inst says : The Chief Inspector of Police received the official report of the Deloraine tragedy yesterday morning from Mr D. D. Griffin, Superintendent of Police, Deloraine. The only material difference between his account and that already published by us, is that the murdered woman's name is Bitches. The husband, Isaac Ritches, has been examined by Dr McNeece, who had given it as his opinion that the sufferer would not live twenty-four hours. He was alive when the letter was closed on the 4th inst. The exact spot where the murder was committed was at Mole Creek, which is over ten miles from Deloraine. The delay in forwarding the despatch was explained by Mr Griffin as arising from the fact of his having to go in person to the scene of the murder.