A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN QUEBEC.

Mataura Ensign, Volume V, Issue 234, 2 March 1883, Page 6

A TERRIBLE TRAGEDY IN QUEBEC.

Stonefibld, Quebec, January 2nd. — A dispatch from East Hawkesbury says that a hired man murdered R. W. Cooke and wife, eldest daughter and one son. Cooke was murdered with an axe in a barnyard. Mrs Cooke and daughter were strangled in the woodshed, and the son George was killed in bed with an axe. The other son had a thigh broken and may recover. Fannie Cooke, coming to her brother's assistance, received a severe wound on the breast. She may recover. The murderer first attacked Emma Cooke in an upstairs storeroom, adjoining the house, strangling her with a rope. Mrs Cooke, evidently having come to her daguhter's assistance, was next strangled in the same way. He next attacked Mr Cooke, who had gone to the barnyard, where he killed him with an axe, literally chopping; his head to pieces. Then entering the house the fiend proceeded up staira to the room occupied by George, who was asleep, striking him and inflicting two fearful wounds on the temple with an axe, from which he shortly afterwards died Then rushing into Willies room, he struck him on the thisjh, inflicting a dangerous wonnd. Willie, although disabled, grappled with him, and the noise alarming his sisters, Maggie and Fannie, brought them to his assistance. In the struggle which ensued, Maggie secured the axe. The murderer then seized a lamp and struck Fanny with it, wounding her seriously on the head. He then fled downstairs. The two girls going by the front stairs met him in the dining room armed with a poker, with which he struck at them. They defended themselves and closed the door on him. Maggie ran to the front door where she hailed a passer-by, who summoned assistance, upon hearing which the murderer fled. He was seen to cross the river going in the direction of St. Philip's Station, on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Nothing further has been heard of him. The house presents a most ghastly spectacle, the bodies of the four victims being laid out in it, and the floors, walls and doors bespattered with blood. Willies wounds are so serious as to afford but slight hopes of his recovery. The murderer is Frederick Mann, a young Englishman lately out from London, and had been but three months in their employ.