AN AFRICAN TRAGEDY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9193, 6 May 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AFRICAN TRAGEDY.

A FAMILY CRUELLY BUTCHERED. Details of « frightful tragedy in Mamburg, South Africa, are given in the local press. Poonah, the murderer, had been unsuccessfully paying his addresses to the daughter|of his master, Moonasammy, and on a Saturday evening in March last, while the latter was locked up in the police station, he took advantage of his absence to slaughter the whole family in the mast horrible manner. When they were all asleep he got up and fetched a longhandled 81b axe, with which he smashed open Moonasammy'a box for the purpose of extracting therefrom a dagger which he knew was secreted there. The noise he made in smashing open the box awoke the two girls; but the mother, Rajamah, and the servant, Kottyn, slept through all the noise, their potations earlier in the evening no doubt accounting for this. On securing the dagger, which is in shape the facsimile of an Italian stiletto, with a long, keen, double-edged blade, he entered the room occupied by the Indian servant, Kofctyn, whom he dealt two rapid blows from left to right across the neck and jaw, severing all the tissues of the neck and the jugular vein. After carefully examining his victim to see if his work had been completed satisfactorily he left the room and crossed the diningroom, and crept into the room where the family slept, carrying the dagger in his left hand and the axe in his right. A light was burning iu the room as he entered, and to all appearances the inmates were wrapt in slumber. Advancing to the bedside he dealt the mother, who was lying between the two girls, two swinging blows with the axe, from loft to right, severing her head from her body. Before the other bewildered occupants could fully realise what happened, he d»alt the younger girl, Papah, two similar blows, almost decapitating her also. By this time the other unfortunate girl, his betrothed, was thoroughly awake, but the acts described had been so quickly enacted thab the poor girl seemed spellbound. Before she had time to scream he sprang upon her with the dagger, which he plunged up to the hilt in her side. The girl must have turned around after the delivery of this horrible stab, and raised her arm as if to protect herself from further injury, as two more stabs were found in her left forearm. The fiend appears to have then plunged the dagger again in the girl's body, as a large > gaping wound was found in her chest, and to have finished his horrible task by cutting his victim's throat, entirely severing the carotid artery and the larynx. The murderer then calmly returned to his room and laid down. After a while he got up and rummaged about until he found a very antiquated piece of iron tubing— Poonah is a manufacturer of fireworks—so, taking this impromptu pistol, he loaded it with some of his firework powder, the grains of which combustible were very large, indeed almost as large, in fact, as buckshot. After loading the weapon with powder, he placed a number of pellets in the barrel, rammed the charge home, and calmly pluced the muzzle against his throat and the breach into the flame of the oil lamp. After waiting some time the powder ignited, and the contents were discharged into his throat. However, he found he still lived, the pellets apparently only lodging in the muscles of the throat and doing little injury. Again he charged the pistol, and repeated the performance, this time directing the eontents into his chest ; but although he was rendered for the time being unoonscious it would appear that again he was most unsuccessful in his attempts to take his own life, none of the pellets {as far as can bo judged), having penetrated th* lungs..