AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2689, 24 July 1894, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN NEWS.

I EXTRAORDINARY DIVORCE CASE. ' | The matrimonial case of Wear v. Wear ! and Popham, a suit for judicial separation, and claiming £IOOO damages against tho ou the ground of adultery with i' ,e petitioner's wife, was concluded at Adelaide o? tho Gth The caso has excited the great*:* the court was crowded day by ciJ" '' iiat made tho suit the moreoxtraordinaty C* 8 that no independent evidence of familiarity was given throughout tho whole proceed ings, and this was commented upon by the judge in his charge to tho jury. The petitioner is a photographer at Gawler, and tho co-respondent a medical practitioner of high standing in the same town and tho case naturally attracted more than ordinary atteution. In his summing up Mr Justice Bundey expressed extreme regret that it should have been necessa;/ to call iho little daughter, nged eight years, of tho periiionor, to her mother's dishonor. Tho whole c:i3o was exhaustively treated both in the matter of evidence and tho counsel's addresses, and tho jury, after considering for l~> minutes returned a verdict that there was no adulteiy by either tho respondent or the co-

respondent, and the petition was,therefore, | dismissed, with costs against the petitioner. The jury were unanimous in the verdict. TERRIBLE MURDER. A terrible murder was committed at Melbourne on Friday night, July 6th, the victim being a young woman of intemperate habits named Minnie Hicks, aged 23. For the last two years she had been living with an American negro named Frederick Jordan, and he has been arrested charged with the crime. At the door and along the floor of the cottage I where the two lived were blood stains, and scattered around were articles of female clothing, all blood covered and torn to shreds. Lying on the bed was the body of the woman. Her face had been battered till the features were unrecognisable, her head had been bruised, and parts of the hair had been torn from the scalp. All over the body were marks of the most brutal violence, and the few articles of clothing still upon the body were saturated with blood. An endeavour had been made to clean up the floor,and hidden away in a corner, between the post and the wall, were a pair of trousers which were bloodstained and torn. Fearing a beating from the negro, she went to Btay for the night at a Mrs Turnbull's, where Jordan turned up and ordered her home. The woman seemed disinclined to go, and he therefore beat her with his fists, dragged her from the couch, threw her on the floor, and kicked her. Turnbull saw all this, and finally thought it necessary to interfere. He said, " Look here, Jordan, don't murder the woman in my house, take her home if you want to kill her." Jordan answered, ** All right," and taking the woman by the hair, dragged her outside the house, where he again commenced to beat and kick her. Turnbull closed his door and went to bed. When he rose iu the morning he found a handful of the woman's hair, torn from the scalp (and with the scalp still adherent in parts), the woman's brooch, and the man's pipe outside his door, and a little later heard the news of the murder.