A DEMENTED MOTHER

Evening Star, Issue 14495, 21 February 1911, Page 4

A DEMENTED MOTHER

ATTACKS HER CHILDREN IN BED. THEN COMMITS SUICIDE. [Pan United Press Association.] MASTERTON, February 21. A terrible tragedy occurred at Masterton shortly after midnight last night. Some time before one o’clock Mr A. E. Winzinberg, who resides at the top end of Essex street, was awakened from his sleep by loud, pitiful screams. He got out of bed and went to the door, but could see nobody. The screams continued, and then he aaw someone in nightclothes, covered in blood, rushing by the house, screaming: “ Come to mother, come to the bouse 1” Mr Winzinberg ran oyer to the house opposite, which was occupied by Mrs Gardiner, a widow, and her two children. The front door was open, and on entering a bedroom, where a gaslight was burning, a terrible spectacle met his gaze. Lying in the centre of a double bedstead, in a pool of blood, was a little girl about eleven years of age, named Beryl. Her head was shockingly mutilated, and sire was quite insensible. Mr Winzinberg ran to a house opposite and summoned the police and doctors, and then returned to the scene of the tragedy. Ho took the weeping little boy, Jerry, to his own. house, where bis wounds were bathed. The arrival of the doctors and the police showed the condition of the girl to be very serious. There was a terrible gash over the eye and the front of the skull was fractured. She was token to the hospital, quite unconscious. Her life is despaired of. The hov is suffering from severe contusions on the head, but his condition is not serious. The bedroom presented a shocking sight. The pillows and bedclothes were covered with blood, and a poker, with which the deed is supposed to have been committed, was lying on the floor. The mother was not to be found. A search was instituted, and her body was discovered about 2.15 a.m., face downwards, 7n a creek. Life was extinct. The body was taken to the morgue. The deceased was between thirty and forty years of ago, and was formerly a resident of Turangarere. Her husband, Hector Gardiner, died some time ago. It is supposed that the mother committed the deed in an uncontrollable fit of dementia.