THE HOLLOWAY TRAGEDY.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3966, 18 November 1891, Page 2

THE HOLLOWAY TRAGEDY.

a Sordid story of Domestic Trouble.

Londok, September 25. The story cf Ernest Nightingale, th young and apparently fairly able commer eial traveller, who wound up a life of careless indolence and heartless self-indulgenc with a crime of truly colossal cowardice deserves chronicling in your columns i only for the glaring moral i* conveys to ba loungers and billiard enthusiasts. Emesi Nightingale was one of the three personi ivho were found doad in thoir bedroom in 51 ftungerford road, Holloway, on the sth o his month. " The others," says the Dail; Sews, in a resume of the circumstances vare his wife and his son, aged sixteei' nonths. There was a fourth, namely, J iaby girl, Florence Ruby, agod four months she was alive in her father's a<ms when tl« )o lice eonstablc entered the place in th< iftcrnoon—the gas still burning. Tliero n :omething peculiarly horrible, somcthinf tfolaesque, in that picture of the child stil ilive in its dead father's arms-~andtht ;as still burning. Dr Arthur Luff and Di Spicer, who conducted the post- mtrtem ox. imination, had no difficulty whatever in liswvering the cause of death. Prussic leid was found in the stomach of the father, nother, and son, The child, who diet mbsequently, might have been poisoned, oi t :might have died of convulsions. lhe joison must have been taken from thebottK vbioh the police found in the bedroom, and vhieh, as Dr Luff said, contained enougl: o kill sixteen adults. The three must have lied very quickly, said the same witness ; J ihould say the poison was administered oul )f the tumbler to the»dults, and by means »f a teaspoon to either one or both of tin ufants . . . I should imagine that tn« wison had been taken soon after the leoeased man and woman wont to bed. It rould be possible for the man to have idministercd the poison to hw wife vhile she was asleep. It could lardly have been swallowed by ar, iccident, on account of its oflensiye ,mell' Dr Duff thought it impossible that teould be forced upon a person, at least vithout a very severe strugg.e. It is absa utely certain there was no struggle. I leems almost as certain that the poor w° m * r ?as under some pretext or-rather, eskedbj ler husband to swallow the poison and that he meekly obeyed. The spot was as >rderly as if the three had died in tnoii deep. The whole story is simple in the ■xtreme. Its moral is as threadbare as the slothing of the shiftless, hopeless, poverty, itriclten victims, and as cold as the world. It was not a case of jealousy, nor of hatred jetween husband and wife. The only iragedy in it was the tragedy of a resourceess charaoter, too weak to resist any sort )t temptation, and unbraced by any sense )f duty to wife, or child, or employer. We ire speaking of the husband. Hera, was a nan who, as traveller to a liberal and lnlulgent firm, ought to have been fairly well iff, in his statien of life, with nearly £IOO a rear. But what a pitiful, sordid story oi lomestte hardship and unintelligent spiriless endurance ! The ppor wife, usually irithout a farthing in her pocket, and the luns always at the door 1 And the husband ilmostas impeounious, borrowing from iveryone who would lend. As the fathor-n-law said in his evidenoe,' no ready money ippears to have been spent in the house lince he was married.' What did ho do vith his money ? Spend it iu dnnk ? His ! ather who also appeared as a witness deslared that he was temperate That only ihowed how little the fathor know. Other vitnesses rovealed the man's real habits. V stable boy told the jury how Ernest Nightingale soddened himself in publiolouses, and played billiards ' for five or six wurs at a time'; and how the man would jo home at three or feur o'clock in the norning. And so the poor wife ' never lad any money.' Mary Ann Cole s remark lumme'd up Ernest Nightingale and his :aroer more pithily than she was aware of : He was not up to much.' That was just t. Nightingale did nothing overtly, posi;ively cruel. He had too little energy for ihat. He and his'wife appear to have been •eally attached to each other—in so far as i poor oreatnre like Nightingale could enertain a positive feeling of any sort. He lould not muster sufficient resolution to ;et out of bed in the morning. He conld wt resist the public-house. He could not •esist billiards. And the poor wife endorsed t all with scarcely a complaint. She took t all, naturally—as she must have taken he peison which her husband gave her and lis children aa the only means of esoapmg rom thoir little worriei. At any rate, he iad enough resolution to take that last lose."