MURDER AT GEELONG.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1099, 15 October 1883, Page 2

MURDER AT GEELONG.

On September 26 a murder was committed by a woman named Silk on ber husband, a miner, who resided at Morrison’s Diggings, between Geelong and Ballarat. Particulars to hand reveal hideous, and, it is almost un- j questioned, maniacal barbarity., Silks mate, a miner named Benjamin Latter, culled for him, according to custom, about 8 o’clock'!-in the morning, and encountered Mrs Silk at the door of her house. On his inquiring for Silk, she intimated that he inside, and motioned to Latter to go in. He did so, I and: saw the body of her husband ly ing ob |fte floor covered with blood, and quite cold and stiff/ After a few words with Mrs, Silk as to the manner in,which her husband was killed,.he told her not to interfere with anything, and went and informed the police. The woman has since made a statement to the effect that her husband first wanted to shoot a man named Fraucombe, with whom he had fought at a neighbouring hotel,

and after her daughter had gone for some whisky, he made two attempts to shoot her (Mrs Silk). In self defence she struck him on the head twice with an adze, and when ho subsequently tried to rise from the floor, she gam him seven more blows on the head and killed him, From the circumstantial evidence it would appear that Siik, alter going into the house, was sitting on a low stool by the fire, and that his wife then, struck him with a sharp adzrt. This is : apparent from the blood stains on the wall, which seems to hare sported against the canvas rather than to have been sprinkled on it. Silk seems to have made a dash either for the door or his gnn, which were both at one end of the room, distant from the fireplace. Here he was struck down and literally chopped to death. No less than eleven wounds were counted by the doctor on his head, eight having been caused with the head of the adze, and three with the back of it. The front of the head was chopped out, the floor where he fell being covered with blood, brains, and pieces of bone. What were the exact incidents of that horrible butchery will probably never be known, ns the woman was the- only cue present besides her victim, and-the only assertion she does make worth credence is that she killed her husband, A neighbonr, who lives about 120 yards from Silk’s states that about 8 o’clock he heard a dull thumping in Silk’s house,, and remarked to his wife that “ Jacob was smashing the boxes with the axe again.” He says it was customary for Silk, when he was drunk, to break np the boxes in the house with an axe. At this time the daughter was observed going in the direction of Mnter’s Hotel, and it is surmised that it was at this period that the ill-fated man was battered to death. At the coroner’s inquest the prisoner entered npon a horrible narrative of improprieties she alleged had taken place between the deceased and his daughter. She said she had determined to take his life for trying to make a blackguard of his child. She thought first of shooting him, bnt did not know whether she would succeed in that, as she bad never fired a gnn off in her life. Then she examined the hammers and the adzes, and selected the one which she had used as the best. The prisoner Was entering into a narration of certain acts she and Silk had perpetrated, when the coroner ordered her to be removed, as no good purpose would be served by allowing her to continue. The jnry fonnd a verdict of wilful mnrder against the accused, and she was ’committed for trial at the next assizes at Geelong.