TRAGEDY IN SMITHFIELD.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 569, 9 September 1869, Page 4

TRAGEDY IN SMITHFIELD.

A terrible tragedy has sent a thrill of horror through ihe city. A letter was received one Monday morning by the police at Smithh'eld station, signed " J. W. Duggan, and warning them to go to 15 Hosier-lane. They went, and found an entire family, the writer of the letter, his wife, and six children, all lying dead, poisoned with prussic acid, under circumstances which suggested, or rather proved, that tHe children had been poisoned with the assent of the wife. Duggan was a clerk in the employ of a manufacturing Bilver- smith in the neighborhood of Smithfield ; he had become consumptive, lost the confidence of his employers, was dismissed, and had notice to quit the house which he occupied upon the premises. He had lived soberly and worked hard, and wii.li his wife had striven te bring up in decency and comfort their six young children. They were respectably connected, and all the neighbors speak well of them. It had been a hard struggle all through life, and now all seemed lost. Hope and courage died, and apparently nian and wife together resolved to quit a world in which the conditions of existence are so hard, and to save their children, who, he argued, might be consumptive like their parent, from the evil to come. On Saturday he purchased a bottle of prnssic acid. On Sunday the little ones wero taken out for a last walk ; letters were written to the brother, in Bristol, to

tell him of the fatal resolution which had been taken ; supper beer was brought as the convenient vehicle of the poison, and to each child as it slept the dpftdly potion was adninistered. Their little' clothes ' were decently put aside ; the Bible was opened at the family register, and the marriage certificate pinned neatly there. Then a note was posted summoning the police, and husband and wife lay down tq die. Such seems to be the brief history of this terrible crime.