TRIPLE TRAGEDY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 12, 8 October 1927, Page 5

TRIPLE TRAGEDY

MOTHER POISONS CHILDREN . ! VERDICT AT INQUEST Dominion Special Service. Auckland, October 7. The tragic happening at a farm at t Karaka on September 6, when Mary Minnie Blackwell, aged 36, and her two ( daughters, Marjorie, aged 14, and Muriel, aged 11, were found dead in their home, was investigated bv the Coroner, Mr. F. K. Hunt, S.M., to-day. After hearing evidence, a verdict was returned that the girls were killed by strychnine poison administered by ' the mother /; while in a condition of unsound mind, and that the mother then committed suicide.

Giving evidence to-day, Hilda Lena Dryland, a maternity nurse, said that Mrs. Blackwell consulted her about two months before the tragedy. She was very distressed. She complained of the I hardness of her life and the poorness of her surroundings. She threatene"’ to kill herself and take the -childr with her.

Fred Wright Yates, manager oi Yates’s Farm, said that the boy Blackwell called at the farm house with a note. from, his' mother, asking that a doctor be sent for. Later in the day he saw Blackwell, who told him that 1 during the previous two weeks his wife had threatened to commit suicide. About twelve months before Mrs. Blackwell had taken strychnine from the. farm to her house and she told witness that she had mixed it with the family dinner, but later coming to her senses i had thrown the dinner away.

Herbert John Blackwell, the husband of the dead woman, said that on several occasions his wife had threatened to commit suicide, but he had always managed to pacify her. There was no poison in the houses to his knowledge. Kenneth M. Griffin, Government Analyst, said that the stomach contents of each of the victims contained a fatal quantity of -strychnine. There was no trace of poison in the food.