A LAUDANUM DRINKERS GRIM

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10425, 24 April 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

A LAUDANUM DRINKERS GRIM

A forqkman named Owen Land, who resides at 10, Burnet View, Tong Road, Leeds, stabbed his wife, under most peculiar and painful circumstances. Mrs. Land, who is a woman of feeble constitution, went to bed on Saturday evening before her husband's return, but hearing him enter the house about midnight, she went downstairs, being afraid that, as he whs a confirmed laudanum drinkor, he might fall asleep in a chair. She found him with his head laid upon the table, apparently asleep, and with a laudanum bottle in his left hand. Without disturbing him, »he commenced to take off his boots, and had removed one of them, when her husband jumped up, and stabbed her in the back, between the shoulders. Mrs. Land wan dazed at the time, and did not know she had boon stabbed until she felt blood running down her back on to the floor. Instinctively she made for tho door, but fainted immediately she got into the fresh air. A neighbour, Mrs. Dickinson, temporarily dressed her wound, and she afterwards returned to bed. When her husband joined her in the bedroom, ho pointed to blood on his hands, and when she showed him hor back, he said he did not think he had done it. Daring the remainder of the night Land did everything in hit power to succour his wife, and referring to tho stab in her back, said, " If I have done that, 1 really don't know. How did I it J" About noon the neighbours called in Dr. Taylor, of Whitehall Road, and as the doctor considered it possible that, owing to her previous ill-health, Mrs. Land might not recover, Dr. .Coleman (one of., the ,city justices), and the Magistrate's Clerk (Mr. John Thornton), took her' depositions late on Sunday evening. . Land,;: who made.no attempt, to ; evade capture, was quietly arrested. He was '. brought ; before the uagiikntw on Monday, tod remanded, - /