BOY’S THROAT FATALLY CUT

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1928, Page 9

BOY’S THROAT FATALLY CUT

MOTHER CHARGED WITH MURDER. By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright. Melbourne, Sept. 22. John McNeill, aged nine, was frightfully gashed in the throat with a razor by his mother while he lay asleep this morning at his home in Robelie Bay. He rushed screaming into the street, where he collapsed and died before medical aid could reach him. The woman, who was recently an inmate of an asylum, left her husband in bed and went for a drink. Presently he heard screams and rushed out, caught his wife and took the razor away after a struggle. The woman was later charged with murder and reReceived September 23, 5.5 p.m. Sydney, Sept. 23. A pathetic story is told of the Rozelle tragedy and of Mrs. Martha McNeill, frho is said to have been suffering from religious manaia. When her husband heard his son’s agonised cry “Oh Mum, don’t, Mum, Mum!” trail off into a choking gurgle he rushed into the room and saw his wife standing over the boy’s bed with a razor in her hand. The father and elder son grappled with the woman and secured her after a struggle in which the demented mother showed extraordinary strength. “The Lord told me to do it,” she shrieked, and later when en route to the reception house in an ambulance waggon, she sang hymns