A MOURNFUL STOILY.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5400, 5 June 1879, Page 3

A MOURNFUL STOILY.

(lonijont daily telegraph:, march 15.)

' Shortly after midnight ph. Thursday, at the Midland Terminus, St. Pancras, the officials going through the promises 'ori their usual inspection before extinguishing the lamps, discovered that wliich has furnished a subject for a coroner's inquest, and may well suggest besides some verymonrnful thoughts. In one of the retiring rooms they came upon the body of a lady, seen 'at tho first glance, and even in the rigidness of violent death, to have been of good previous health? young, •beautiful,' and refined. She was also found to be handsomely dressed, wearing valuable rings and jewels, and well provided with money. There was a bleeding bullet wound behind her right ear, aud a double-barrelled pistol .fell from tlie cold and delicate hand when they lifted the dead woman from tho floor. An examination of tlie cards and 'papers found upon her soon gave the officials a clue to her identity, and when they had telegraphed to those whom they judged to be her friends, the corpse was recognised as that of Mrs Blanche Harrington Hudson, the wife of a retired naval officer at Scarborough, and sister of Mr William Clough, banker, of York. At the time of .the recognition it .was "reported/ that the husband was unable or • unwilling to explain the circumstances of his wife's departure from home ; and certainly his evidence at the inquest hold on Monday, throw very little fresh light on the subject. Mr Hudson would only , state that the deceased had been in good health, "as far as he knew;" that she was in the habit of leaving home " without saying exactly which relatives she meant to visit ;" that she. was at liberty thus' to go and stay, "as long as she liked ;" and that they *' did not part ; on bad terms as far as he knew," ?Dis- , satisfied with these cold or cautious answers, the foreman of the jury pressed upon Mr Hudson the question, "Had you been living together on good or bad terms?" and the roply was, ".We had been living as married people generally do." But if this were a true response the evidence which followed certainly lifts the curtain from a very sad average conjugal existence. The brother of the dead lady deposed that his sister spent the last morning of her life at his house, that she was then grievously unhappy, and agitated, and that she was on her. way to. town to consult her family lawyer. The solicitor being examined, gave , evidence that it was in order to procure a separation and the custody of her children that the unhappy woman had called upon him. "She told me," he said, " that she went in bodily fear of her husband. She produced a pistol to me, and said that if her husband attempted to force her back home she would destroy herself ; the miserable times she had suffered for the last twelve, years she could not bear any longer." Mrs Rose Barry, sister of the suicide, confirmed this deplorable explanation. There had been constant misery in her sister's home ; her husband was cruel ; Mrs Hudson had on one occasion come to her with a collar-bone dislocated by Mr Hudson's violence. " She was afraid of her life." A letter addressed by her to her solicitor implored the goodness of God upon her children, to whom she was tenderly attached, and spoke of tho intolerable sorrows of her married life, while the following was a last agonised note sent by Mrs Hudson to Mrs Barry: — "Darling — Thank you for your letter. All you say I shall try to do, aud go on with the case. It will be tried in September, they say. To-morrow I will go to' Mr Wells, at Scarborough, but I must not see my dear children. I fear H. H. would find me out and kill me. I am half dead, and don't know if I shall get through what is before me. lam advised to go back and live with him, as though nothing had happened."