A Horrible Affair.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 199, 22 September 1888, Page 3

A Horrible Affair.

London, July 21. Robert Upton, aged 61, laborer, was executed at Oxford Gaol on Tuesday morning for the Murder of his wife Emma, on the 23rd of May, at Mil ton-under- Wych wood. The crime was of a very brutal nature; the prisoner, who was of a passionate disposition, having instantly killed his victim with an iron bar. Quarrelling had been heard by the neighbors, and Upton was seen chasing his wife with the bar, he having previously thieatened to kill her. He was knocked down, and the bar taken from him and thrown aome distance ; but hajby some means gained possession of it, again pursued his wife, and with a fearful blow across the upper part of the face, which smashed both jaws, the nose, and the base of the left eys, instantly deprived her of life.. He admitted his guilt, both before the magistrate aud Mr Justice Denman, and no effort to obtain a commutation of the death sentence was made. Berry carried out the execution, and at the appointed time •he bolt was drawn, and the culprit disappeared through the trap. The officials and the reporters then a peculiar sound, and looking into the cavity they saw that the shock of the fall had tom the flesh of the culprit’s neck, from which the blood had poured into the pit below, and splashed on to the side of the scaffolding. Death had, of course, been instantaneous. Berry accounted for the occurrence by stating that the culprit’s neck was thin, and that with a man of his age such a thing was not always to be prevented. A drop of five feet had been given.