A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2413, 18 October 1892, Page 4

A DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

The Hobart Mercury'of the6th inst. reports a terrible domestic tragedy enacted an hour before noon on the previous day in Hobart, when Philip Newell, a cabman, shot his wife dead with a revolver, and subsequently killed himself with the same weapon. The spot where the shocking deed was perpetrated was horribly suggestive, it being on the outskirts of an old and unused cemetery, known as St. George's burying-ground. Only two months ago Newell was before the court on a charge of ill-treating his wife. He was fined, and had not been living with her since. Whatever the cause of the crime, there appears only too much reason to suppose that it was premeditated. Newell visited Davis' ironmongery establishment, and purchased a six-chamber revolver. An hour later Richard Dingle, a coachman, was walking near the scene of the murder and saw Newell and a woman—since found to have been his wife—approaching each other from opposite directions. When about twenty yards apart Newell appeared to be excited, and said, " Well, see that," holding a bottle in his hand and putting it to his mouth. Suddenly he said, " You wont ? Then take that I" and at once discharged the revolver at the woman's head. She fell on the footpath, and did not move or struggle, but, as if not satisfied with his work, the assassin fired two more shots at her as she lay dying. Newell then fired at himself, and, although he bled profusely, ho did not appear to have hurt himself seriously. While he was being pursued by Dingle and another, but before he was captured, he shot himself in the region of the heart. The woman died before she reached the hospital, and the man at 7 o'clock in the evening. Newall bore a good character, but was of violent temper, and it is supposed that he brooded over his wife's refusal to rejoin him. It is stated that on the previous morning he drafted a will, leaving his father as a solo executor. This, however, he did not execute Much sympathy is felt for the relatives of both parties, who are respectable people.