The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-10-26 00:00:00

MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY IN LONDON.

A melancholy and fatal occurrence has just been
brought to light. It appears that on Thursday in last
week, a respectably-dressed lady and gentleman took
apartments in a house in Golden-square, stating they
had arrived from the Continent, and required the room
for a week only. They slept there on Ihuraday night,
had their breakfast in the house on Friday morning,
dined at a restaurant in Regent street, and returned
home at ten o'clock, p.m. Nothing MN afterwards
heard or seen of them until eleven o'clock on Satur-
day morning, when Mrs. Cunningham, the landlady,
went upstairs to clean the rooms, and on coming to
the door of the apartments of her new lodgers she
was much startled to find it locked, and the key tied
to the handle outside. On entering the room she
saw the lady seated in an arm chair, with a rail-
way rug partly over her face, and the gentleman
stretched on the floor tightly clenching what afterwards
proved to be a Bible in his hands. She instantly gave
an alarm, when medical all was called n, and he dis-
covered that the bodies had been dead some time, and
a phial labelled strychnine was found on the table.
There was also by its side, apparently n a man's hand-
writing, a note in English, to the following effect :

" You will find £.3 on the table, which I have left to bury
us with; let it he done as quietly as possible: one pound is
to be given to Mrs. Cunningham for her kindness to wi, and
also what remains in the trunks besides."
On searching the bodies no papers of anylitescription
which will lead to their identity have been found, but
from the appearance of the grate in the room there is
no doubt a number of papers were destroyed before
the terrible act was committed. The man appears to
have been about 45 years of age, and the woman 50.

The Daily Telegraph, in remarking upon the tragic ;flair,
say.:—
-

The double suicide must have been planned and
carried out with a deliberaton altogether marvellous.
A heap of blackened ashes in the grate showed how
every vestige of writing, every clue to identity, had
been carefully destroyed ; an unsigned note on the
table stated that the five or six pounds lying beside
it were to be expended in burying the bodies, and
in compensating the landlady ; and the man had
bound around his jaws and over his head a leathern
strap, the woman a pocket-handkerchief. As
yet there is no clue to the identification of
the suicides, and probably none will ever be found.
It seems unlikely that any wild romance or passion
overpowering all restraints of reason and all love for
life, could have entered into the prosaic existence of
two people in mature middle age, although the improb-
ability would diminish appreciably if it turned out, as
seems to be suspected, that they were French by nation-
ality. What is most striking about the incident is the
care taken to remove all trace by which the former life
or the friends of the miserable pair could be indicated.
Even the most determined suicides have generally
some wish to justify their mad act—some lingering
notion that they may by final words of explanation or
apology stand a little better with the world they urn
leaving—some instinctive desire that their clay shall
not he without the kindly offices of friendship or of
family. But these hapless people in Golden-square
literally "made a solitude "for themselves before they
died; and the manner of their death may suggest
darker thoughts about the life that led up to such an
ending that might he justified if we knew the truth,
which is in all likelihood destined to be buried for
ever n a nameless and shameful grave.