A DEMENTED MOTHER.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 10169, 28 July 1924, Page 4

A DEMENTED MOTHER.

MURDER AND SUICIDE. VERY PAINFUL TRAGEDY. i (Per Pfcess Association.) AUCKLAND, July 27. A shocking tragedy occurred at Alt. Albert this morning, when Helena Harriet Dartli murdered her nine-year-old son Harold by*, cutting his throat with a razor. . The demented mother then committed suioide by cutting her own throat. Mrs Darth was the wife of a retired farmer in comfortable circumstances. She had been indisposed for two years, and during the past six weeks had suffered acutely from a nervous breakdown. She suffered from delusions. Airs Darth took her little son info the bathroom, and there cut both his and her own throat. A trained nurse who was attending her tried to enter- the room by the' door, but failed. She gained an entrance by the window, and found the mother in a dying condition. The little boy had sufficient strength to get out of the bathroom, and he died, in his father’s arms.

AUCKLAND, This Day. Mrs Dath, who killed her little son with a razor and then committed suicide at Mount Albert, had suffered: acutely from a nervous breakdown, and was subject to delusions. She had" been in the care of a trained nurse forthe last three weeks. She was unfertile impression that someone was going* to poison her with arsenic or strychnine. AY lien a visitor called about midday on Sunday Mrs Dath asked thehousemaid to tell her son Harold that ; his mother wanted him. She walked along the passage and met the boy at the bathroom door, and took him intothe bathroom and shut the door. The nurse heard a scream from the bathroom, and entered by the window. Shefound Airs Dath bleeding copiously from a wound in her throat. She told 0 the nurse she had cut Harold’s throat and also her own. She died within two minutes. The hay had escaped from the bathroom, and ran round 'the* house, and fell into his father’s arms. He immediately collapsed and died. Apparently the demented woman took the razor from a cabinet in the bathroom, and while speaking softly to her son slashed his throat, the jugularvein being severed.