BRUTAL ASSAULT. (From the Auckland " Star," Feb. 2.)

Te Aroha News, Volume I, Issue 36, 9 February 1884, Page 3

BRUTAL ASSAULT. (From the Auckland " Star," Feb. 2.)

A l'ONsiijehajile sensation was caused in the purlieus of Chancery-street this afternoon by the report that a man had had his head smashed in through a drunken row in one of tin numerous brothels of,the locality. As usual, the facts did not bear out the first reports, but they were serious enough, at any rate, to need no fictitious colouring. A man named Kichard Torpey had been drinking all the morning in the hovel inhabited by a wretched old hag named Margaret Barstow and her paramour, a vendor of sheep's trotters and fruit, named William Donlon According to Torpey's account of the affair, he had just returned to the house with a couple of bottles of beer with which to continue the carouse, when Donlon, without any warning, lifted up an iron bar and struck him several times about the head with it. The man was felled to the ground, of course, and, alarmed at the sudden effusion of blood, Donlon took to his heels, explaining to several curious neighbours who questioned him concerning the blood on his trousers that the woman Barstow had stabbed a man. Meanwhile Torpey staggered out and down the street after his cowardly antagonist, and was met by Mr Glover, who took him down to the pump in the Auckland Hotel yard, and having washed his wounds, handed him over to Constable Clark, who removed him to Dr. Philson's rooms, where the man's wounds were bandaged. Subsequently his pocket-book was found lying in the garden attached to the house, with all its contents littered about, but it is not known whether any portion is missing. Torpey is taciturn, probably through inebriation, and it is not known whether robbery was the motive of the assailant, or whether anger or jealousy provoked him to the assault. Donlon was arrested in High street shortly after 1 o'clock, and lodged in custody. He says that on returning home this morning he found Torpey, Mrs Barstow, Mrs Burtonshaw, and Theresa Hand in his house drinking, and at once ordered out Torpey, who accordingly left. Donlon then went away, and on returning again shortly afterwards found Mrs Barstow and Torpey sitting together on the bed. He then took up a bar of iron and threatened to strike Torpey with it if he did not immediately decamp, whereupon Torpey seized the bar out of his hands and struck him severely with it on the right wrist, in witness whereof he shows an indented abrasion of ] the skin. He furthersays that Mrs Barstow then secured the iron, and committed upon Torpey the assault, from the effects of which he now suffers. Mrs Barstow was thereupon arrested likewise, and the two remain in durance vile. Torpey is a bushman, employed at Churchhill, and only arrived by the Waikato train last night. He was formely a soldier, ' and bears upon his right arm the scar of a sabre wound that he received at the battle of Lucknow. -He has been removed to the Hospital