SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN SYDNEY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1011, 30 September 1882, Page 3

SHOCKING TRAGEDY IN SYDNEY.

By recent mail news we have particulars ot the murder and suicide by a wife in Sydney, which was briefly re - corded in our cablegrams a few days ago. The murdered man’s name was Smith, and on the night of the murder he and his wife quarrelled, and Smith was heard to say, Well, I will sleep on the sofa.” The next morning, about ten o’clock, the woman Smith went to a shop close by, and stated that her husband, “ whom she called u poor Billy,” was lying under the table in pools of blood. The lady of the shop, whose name is not given, knowing the woman had been queer for some time in her manner, took no notice of the statement. But shortly afterwards the neighbors missed the woman Smith, whom they were in the habit of seeing almost continually ; and observing the doors of the house closed, and hearing no one within, their curiosity was roqsed to know what had become of them so suddenly. Subsequanily the door was forced and a scene of a most revolting nature presented itself, The man Smith was lying on the floor with his head battered in. Though he was not dead he was quite unconscious, weltering in his own blood, and groaning heavily. The woman was hanging to a battop in the ceiling, being suspended by a olothcs-line, and was quite dead. Her body was at once cut down by the police, who were soon on the spot, ami, of course, medical aid was procured as speedily as possible for t(je man, who seemed to be dying. He was in such a horribly mutilated condition that liis recovery was hopeless. His wounds were dressed by Dr Ward, bi t after lingering, apparently in intense pain, till four o’clock in the afternoon, he expired without having regained consciousness, By repute it would appear that the family flqpe anything but a good character, and it is staled that the l only other imuafeg of the hyuje were a

grown up daughter md her infant. A search was instituted on flic premises by Sergeant Abercrombie, who found a tomahawk partly concealed in an outhouse. Upon the head ot the weapon (not the blade) there were stains of blood and some human li air, which pointed to the iact that the blows received by the man upon the head were administered with the back of the axe. There was a couch in the room, near which he was lying on the floor, and the fact of the neighbors the night before hearing him say that he ivould sleep on the sofa, suggests the idea that the unfortunate man was brutally murdered while he slept. The affair is, perhaps, the most horrible tragedy that has happened in Sydney, or the colony, for many years.