The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1890-03-27
A SATANIC TRAGEDY.
A Poor Negro Woman has Her Head Com
pletely Severed from Her Body.


Especial to THE HERALD-Examiner Dispatch
SoMERvELLE, Tenn, March 2.6-Almost
in the shadow of the quaint little Episco-
pal church here yesterday while the bells
were Ginning for divine worship, a tragedy
occurred as singular as it is satanic. All
the afternoon the vicinity was crowded
with excited villagers and country people,
mostly colored, and all fully persuaded
that whoever committed the crime, and
whatever were the circumstances, it could
only be explained on the theory of the
direct interposition of the genuine personal
devil himself.
The poor victim was a simple, good
hearted black woman, Mrs. Hobson, who
was a servant in the family of the Episco-
pal minister, and lived with her four chill
dren in a small house in the rear of the
r%ector's residence. Yesterday morning
her husband, who had been in the country
at work, called at the house in company
with another negro, and after a short stay
started out for a short walk. Returning
an hour later, a spectacle that froze him
with horror stared him in the
face. Rolling slowly down the
walk to the gate as he approached the head
of his wife, the eyes seemingly fixed upon
him with a tigerlsh glare, and a CHASTITY
grin on the ashen lips. A veritable neck
lace of blood encircled the throat, but the
woman's body was gone. The stricken
husband staggered to the corner of the
house. A new terror confronted him here.
On the doorstep lay the decapitated re-
mains of the sharer of his humble house
hold cares and joys, and against her shout
Gers was a stick Of firewood that but too
plainly had served as the block of her prim-
tive guillotine. Against the fibre of the
stick were three distinct cuts of an axe.
Now comes the ~strangest part of the extra
ordinary tragedy. 1t was the seemingly
conclusive evidence that the headsman in
the startling drama was a child, the
woman's W son, scarcely eleven years of
age. The little fellow was found playing
innocenJly with a number of other children
near by, his clothing saturated with
the blood of his parent. The evil
IDENTIFY mad explanation given by
the child was that the blood
came from a chicken he had killed, a story
which was changed later by the crimson
stained little one to a direct statement that
he had slain his mother. He asserted that
she had placed her head down on the block
and commanded him to make of her a sac
rifice, telling him that if he did not cut her
head off she would arise and take his life.
Two explanations of the mystery are
entertained by the coroner and others of
some intelligence. One idea is that the
mother suddenly became insane and that
the son obeyed her behest as literally as
did Jacob hat of Abraham in the olden
days of the Jews. Another suspicion is
that the act was not that of a child or of a
frenzied woman, but sprang from an old
head and was the result of a cunningly laid
old-blooded plot. In other words, Mrs.
Hobson's husband and his tale of his vision
of sudden death is locked unon askanca
The question is: Did he not through zeal
ousy, or some other sinister motive. make
away with his dusky helpmate and then
with the instincts of a fiend seek to a
himself by smearing his son with a moth
er's blood and suggesting to the unfortu-
nate youngster the palpable lie that would
bring swift condemnation