TERRIBLE VILLAGE TRAGEDY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7543, 28 October 1902, Page 2

TERRIBLE VILLAGE TRAGEDY.

A SHOCKING AFFAIR".

The mining village of Middlestone, near Spennymoor, Durham, England, was recently the scene of a terrible domestic tragedy.

The wife of Samuel Walton, a miner well known in the district as a fives player, obtained a separation order on the ground of her husband's persistent) cruelty. Since then the woman, with her child, aged ten months, has lived with her parents.

One afternoon Walton is alleged to have told some neighbours that he was going to pay his wife the first week's maintenance under the order. He went to the house, and, on being admitted, is stated to 'have locked the door and shot his wife with a revolver, severely wounding her.

Walton ig then alleged to have turned to his mother-in-law, Mrs Young, aged fiftyeight, and shot her dead, while a third bullet mortally wounded the baby.

Though desperately wounded, Mrs Walton w;is able to escape from the house and give the alarm. A constable named Lambert hastened to the cottage and looked through the window, when Walton appears immediately to have presented the revolver at the officer and fired through tho window. The constable was unwounded, however, and, going to the back of the house, he pluckily effected an entrance, when a terrible sighfc met his eyes.

Under the table lay the dead body of the elder woman, while Walton was stretched on tho bed with his throat cut, clasping in one arm the body of his child, which was shot, through the head, and still holding in the other hand the revolver, all the chambers of which had been emptied. The baby died in ahout two hours.