TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2311, 28 January 1892, Page 3

TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

A terrible tragedy occurred on the morning of the 20th in St.. at Huntley, near Bendigo. A boy named George Cook, aged seven, was leaving home for school, and passed through the kitchen, where his father, a delicate elderly man, was sitting near the fire. The boy said " Good-bye" in a cheery fashion, and similarly greated his mother, who was in another room, and passed out. A few seconds later the mother seized an axe and struck the boy over the head slightly behind the ear. The lad screamed, and the father rushed out just in time to see his wife deal a second blow with the axe blade on their poor child. He shouted , to her, and she then picked up the child, who was bleeding copiously. The woman was afterwards arrested, and the boy taken to the hospital with his brains protruding from two ghastly wounds, and he died about 11 o'clock. The mother is upward of 50 years of age, and the only remark she has made about the affair is that the boy was studying too hard, and reqviired rest. About 20 years ago she was an inmate of Kew Lunatic Asylum, but apparently recovered, and has since been living happily with her family. A cable message to the Hobart Mercury reports : —" At the inquest on the body of the lad George Cook, the father and husband of the mother who brained her boy with an axe, said when he saw her strike the boy he asked what she had done that for, and his wife replied, ' I am sending him home to Jesus, where he will have rest.' Mrs Cook frequently interjected whilst her husband was giving evidence that ho was telling the exact truth. A verdict of murder was returned, and Mrs Cook was committed for trial. Mrs Cook was in the Kew Asylum for three months 20 years ago, and has been mentally weak of late.