SHOCKING TRAGEDY AT BRADFORD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9130, 11 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

SHOCKING TRAGEDY AT BRADFORD.

"EXCUSABLE HOMICIDE" OF A WIFE. The Bradford coroner concluded an inquest a few days ago on the body of Mrs. Neale, which was found on tho floor of a room behind her shop in Darley street, Bradford, late one Friday night, and whose husband is in custody charged with having murdered her. The evidence disclosed shocking circumstances. John Black, the man who was found with Mrs. Neale by her husband, stated that he called at the shop in and asking for Mr. Neale, was persuaded by the deceased woman to wait for him. About eight o'clock he was going away, when Mrs. Neale asked him to stay and help her to close the shop. Some time elapsed, during which the front door was kept open for the convenience of a customer, in the course of which lie twice said " Good night," but was persuaded by Mrs. Neale to stay. He complied with her request that he should help her to close the front door, and then she said, "1 am going up for my bonnet, and then 1 will accept your company home." She went upstairs and was there some time. He called to her twie.e, and each time she replied, "I am coming." She afterwards cried out, "Come up, I want you." He then went upstairs, and found her there sitting undressed on a box. Ho was amazed, and said, " Good heavens ! Mrs. Neale, what are you doing?" She replied, "1 am going to lie heretonight.'' He asked her to dress herself. Just then the husband, of whose approach he had been unaware, came into the room, and he escaped clown the stairs. An innkeeper named John Cockroft, who is a cousin of the deceased woman, said that on the night in question Neale came to him and told him that he had caught a man named Black in the room, and that Black was sitting at the far end of the room on a box with his wife. In reply to the question, "What did you do?" Neale replied, "I rushed at Black and called him a d — villain, and we had a scuttle in the room, and I ejected hint by the stairway. I seized a long brush and ran him down into the street. i lost my hat, and could not find it. There was blood over one of my wife's eyes, and I washed it off with a cloth. I then requested her to wash and dress and go home, and 1 left the house and went to the White Lion. I returned again to the shop, and she had fallen off the box on to floor. She seemed to have the appearance of one in a fit. I covered her with a coat, and then left the house." On the way to the Town Hall Neale said, "Cousin, I never touched her." When Neale entered the room he trembled, and appeared to be in a dreadful state of mind, and was crying. Another witness, Police-Constable Gibson, who was called to the shop by Cockroft, tendered in evidence a statement made by Neale, and also said that while he was watching the prisoner in the cell Neale said, This is a bad job ; I wish I could see the end of it. There is nobody can say I deliberately did it, because I didn't. 1 did kick her back, but that could not kill a woman in her state," In cross-examination this witness also stated that the window had been broken, apparently from the outside, and there were out«ide the window some ladders, by means of which anyone could have reached the window. Dr. Lodge, police surgeon, who had made a postmortem examination of the body, said there were a number of bruises on various parts. Five ribs on the left side were fractured, some in two places, which must have been caused by very great external violence. Death occurred from internal bleeding caused by fractured ribs. The coroner said it was not possible by any ingenuity to imagine circumstances of greater provocation. Therefore it was his duty to direct that this was one of the cases where the law said that the provocation had been so considerable as to reduce the crime to manslaughter. A verdict of manslaughter was returned.