MURDER TRIAL AT NEWCASTLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8670, 12 September 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

MURDER TRIAL AT NEWCASTLE.

A WIFE'S FATAL RASHNESS. At Northumberland Assizes, at Newcastle, before Mr. Justice Grantham, Dorothy Sinclair (44) was charged with the wilful murder of her husband, Thomas Sinclair, at East Coldside Farm, near Morpeth, on March 11th last. The evidence showed the prisoner and her husband to have been farm servants, and on March 11th they went to the hiring-? at Morpeth, returning about seven o'clock. Shortly alter that hour prisoner ran to the farm-house, and said she was afraid she had stabbed her husband. Mrs. Alder, who owns the farm, went to the prisoner's cottage, and found Sinclair lying dead in a chair, with :t knife wound in his chest. Prisoner told her that on their return from Morpeth she complained of being ill, but her husband only laughed at her. She exclaimed that if lie did that again she would stab him. He dared her to do it, and taking a knife from the drawer she stabbed him. She protested that she did not intend to do it, and while imploring them to send for a doctor to keep him alive, she bathed the wound with warm water, and did all she could for him. The Judge said that there was no evidence of malice aforethought, and tho case was not one of murder. The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter, and prisoner was sentenced to 1- months' imprisonment.