PORTSMOUTH TRAGEDY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16348, 4 February 1924, Page 5

PORTSMOUTH TRAGEDY.

PAINFUL COURT SCENE. (Australian and N. 7, Cabl'' Association.: LONDON, Feb. 2. A woman's piercing shriejk from the cells below startled the crowd assembled in Keynsham Police Court to hear the. sequel to the discovery of a man's body under tho floor of his house at Brisiington, when George Cooper, aged 37, and his mother, aged 57, were charged jointly with, murdering George William Cooper about September 6 last. As the sobbing, dishevelled woman entered the. dock she cried: "Have mercy on me 1 , O God. Have mercy on me." Women in the back of the Court, began to weep. When the son was led into the dock he rushed /nd embraced his mother, saying: "Cheer up, mother, Don't cry." A most poignant scene was witnessed at the end of the hearing when the woman was remanded to Cardiff prison an'd the son was ordered to appear at the inquest on Saturday. Tho mother cried out: "Oh, my boy. Let mil bear it with him. It was .'ill my fault." The police evidence- showed 'that when the son was charged at the police station, he said : "I did it partly in my own defence because I believed my father would have killed me." It is stated that Cooper killed his father with an axe and his defence will be selfdefence under provocation. At the Copper inquest, according, to the son's statement, the cause of the quarrel was the. father's insistence of Ins right to bring other women to the house and threats of what he would do to his mother when she returned home. The son alleged that when playing the piano, after a quarrel, he saw, through a mirror, his father approaching with a hatchet in his hand. A struggle ensued wherein the father was killed.