HEARTRENDING TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7795, 15 November 1886, Page 6

HEARTRENDING TRAGEDY.

A MOTHER DROWNS HERSELF AND FOUR CHILDREN. A cable message dated London Ootober 16, which appears in the New York papers, says : —The local coroner is now impanelling a jury to investigate a domestic tragedy of world-wide interest. It secerns that last night a resident of Falham, near the Thames, named Wilcox, passed a boy, aged seven, sobbing so acutely that Wilcox felt something unusual had happened. To all his questions the little fellow, who was soaking wet, muddy and hatless, could only answer by heartbreaking sobs. Nothing was left except to take the wandering waif to the police station hard by, where, before a roaring cannel fire, he managed to jerk out, "Mother is dead in the water, with baby, Bister, and my brothers, Harry and Frank. I want my father." It became evident that the boy was shockingly frightened, yet soon growing calmer under the reviving influence of heat and some food, he gave his home as 133, Denmark road, Camberwell," a suburban distriot on the Snrrey side of the Thames and miles distant. A telegram sent to the nearest station there soon produced the father, who is a well-to-do butcher, and who, on seeing his child, seemed to realise that some tragedy had occurred, and almost fainted before the story was told. To his eager questions the ohild, reassured, now gave ooherent answers, and made up a story like this: His mother left home in the afternoon, carrying her babe, five months old, with her sons—Harry, aged nine ; the narrator of the story himself, Charles, seven years old, and Frank, aged three. They took the tramcar to the river side, boarded a penny steamboat, got off at Chelsea stairs, walked to Vauxhall, and entered a penny tea garden, where buns, tea, and milk were provided them. They left, walking, doubtless, aimlessly along the embankment, beyond Wandsworth Bridge, when, perhaps by a sudden impulse, the mother turned into the Broomhouse dockyard, near the Hurlingham Polo Grounds, and all at onoe pushed her three boys into the dook water, and, with her babe in her arms, herself jumped in. Charlie, who must have fallen in a somewhat shallow place, scrambled out, but was too muoh scared to give a coherent account of his escape. When the inspeotor questioned the father, who, sobbing as badly as the ohild, said :—" My wife and I bad a silly quarrel. It began on Sunday last, and was daily deepened by mutual reorimination. Yesterday afternoon, as she still felt very badly, 1 suggested a little outing to a friend's house, and this—this is the horrible ending of a foolish tiff." The pair remained till dawn at the station, when a search police party was organised, the members of which, with much difficulty, found, through the boy, the place of the catastrophe. Three little straw hats floating at the side of the dook gave the first corroboration of the youthful tale of murder and suicide. A little later the body of Harry was found in five feet of water. It was neatly dressed, and had on a grey overcoat and knickerbockers. The faoe wore a look of great terror. Soon after midday one of the Thames vulture folk, described in the first chapter of Diokens' " Mutual Friend," recovered near Fulham Bridge the body of Frank, clad in a neat gray frock and pinafore, once white but now soiled with Thames sewerage. The bodies lie at the Chelsea Mortaary, surrounded by an immense crowd dl curiosity mongers, eagerly discussing the last London sensation. The mother and the babe have not yet been f °Those in the tea garden who saw the group of four when taking their last meal describe the mother as seeming perfectly sane and apparently happy. Unfortunately, little can be learned as to the oauie of suoh an impulse and of the manner of such a resolve in a mother thirty-fire years old, always heretofore lovingly maternal, the only witness available being young and having had his memory obsoured by terror. Psychologists thus have no clue as to what was passing in the woman's mind, and as to whether her act was the result of premeditation or of impulse.