THE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 4590, 16 May 1922, Page 3

THE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY.

THE QUEEN CITY SENSATION. (Per Pffcss Association.) Auckland, May 10. Mr' James Thornton (referred to in a telegram on page 2) foreman cleaner on the railways, left his wife and children at home at about 12.30 (mid-day) yesterday, his wife and family being in ordinary health and spirits. Returning home after work, ho found both the front and the back doors locked and the gas alight in the breakfast room. Getting no response to his knocking, he burst open the front door. He found his wife naked in the bath, with the infant child on her breast. Both were dead. The bath was empty, the water having run out, probably through the woman's feet having dislodged the plu £- Ascertaining that life was extinct, Mr Thornton looked for the other three children. Ho found them all dead in bed in a bedroom facing the bathroom. Each body was wrapped in a separate sheet. Their hair was saturated with water, and froth oozed from each mouth. The theory is that the mother stripped each child and drowned it in tho bath, then wrapped it in a sheet, and laid the body on the bed, pulling the bed clothes over it. There were no other signs of violence on the bodies.