HORRIBLE TRAGEDY IN DUNEDIN

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 415, 16 March 1880, Page 2

HORRIBLE TRAGEDY IN DUNEDIN

A telegram from Dunedin, dated 14th March, reports one of the most horrible tragadies which has ever occurred here happened this morning in Cumberlandstreet, when James Murray Dewar, alias Grant, a butcher in the employ of Dorawell, of George-street, was found dead, his wife injured almost beyond hope of recovery, his child suffocated, and. the bedroom on fire, a lighted candle'having been placed under the bed, The deceased man was aged about thirty years, and has been in this colony nearly twenty-two , years. His proper name was Dewar, but his mother (who resides in a house just behind his) having re-mari'ied a carpenter named Grant, he adopted his step-father's name, Between five and six o'clock this morning the milkman who supplies the family, on makiug his customary visit to the house, was startled by; seeing smoke issuing from one of the front windows, and he knocked loudly at the front door, and.receiving no reply, raised an alarm which brought some neighbors to the scene, and subsequently amember of the lire Brigade, Serjeant Dean, and a constable. The house being entered, there was discovered lying dtf the floor Mrs

Grant, in her night-dress, with blood issuing froto her head "and quite unconscious. The bedroom'was next visited and was found full of smoke. There on the bed lay; Mr Grant, with a' severe blow on hia head, evidently 'inflicted by an axe which lay at hand and which bore marks of blood on it. The infaht was also in bed, apparently suffocated, the lower part of.the mattrass having been set fire to by V lighted cindte'which was found alongside of it.' Mrs Grant was then lifted from off the floor and carried into the sitting room, and Dr Niven, who was Bent for, on Beeing her condition, ordered her removal to the hospital. ; . The tragedy must have been committed very early in the morning; but by whom it has been done—whether the act of a stranger or by either of the Grants —is a question that the police are now endeavuriug 'to solve.- So far as can be learnt nothing has been missed from the house, nor does anything in the other rooms appear to have been disturbed. The only suspicious circumstance is that the door of the house was'found to be open. The wounds on Grant's head and those on his wife appear, to the- unprofessional eye, to negative the theory of having been self-inflicted, and there is the additional circumstance, vouched for by many people who knew the couple intimately, that they lived very happy lives, The strangest part of the whole affair is that none of the neighbors, some of whom lived about twelve feet from Grant's house, heard the slightest noise, and were first awakened by the alarm of fire, which, from another source, it is said, was raised by a fireman who lives close by. The woman, who still lives, but unconscious, at the hospital, has three wounds on the head, causing a compound depressed fracture of the skull. One of the wounds is on the crown of the head, the second behind the right ear, and the third on the temple. The affair has caused great excitement.