A VICTORIAN TRAGEDY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 309, 30 December 1914, Page 8

A VICTORIAN TRAGEDY.

INDIAN HAWKER'S ARREST.

[Bv Electric Telegraph-Copyright] [United Press Association.]

(Received 10.20 a.m.)

Sydney, December 30

Singh, an Indian hawker, accused of the Pugsley murders, has been committed for trial.

On the 16th inst. (reports an Australian paper), near Ratamatite, a woman and two of her children were shot dead. A third child was seriously wounded. The murdered woman was Mrs Pugsley, wife of a farmer, living four miles from Ratamatite. Mr Pugsley left his home early to attend to some horses in one of his paddocks, and when he returned some little time later the crime had been committed. The mother and a little girl, aged 3, and the baby girl, aged three months, were dead, and a boy, aged 5, was in a precarious state as a result of wounds he had received. The police scoured the neighbourhood, and eventually arrested an Indian hawker named Butsan Singh, who made a certain statement. The residents of the district, have known Singh for years, as he hag travelled through the district hawking goods for some time past. Recently he appeared to be strange in his manner, and ho suffered under a delusion that people were trying to poison him. He was of tall stature, and had in former days been a soldier in the Indian Army.