St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-07-21
AN UNNATURAL DEED.
A Tennessee Mother Kills Her
Children and Herself.

NASHVILLE, Tenn, July 20.-Mrs.
Pattie Lockridge, wife ofiiThomas Loeb
ridge, shot her three children and her
self about o'clock yesterday afternoon
at her home, three miles south of Spring
Hill, Maury county. Mrs. Lochridge
was thirty years of age. her eldest child
four years old, the second three years
old. and the third four months. The
awful deed was done with double-bar-
relied breech-loading shotgun. After
dinner Mr.. Lochridge went to church.
leaving his home in its usual state Of
quieIness. About 8 o'clock he returned
to the little home he had left and found
the front door locked. This seemed
strange to him, but, concluding his wife
had gone on visit, he went around the
house, intending to enter by the back
door. This also was locked. and he was
compelled TO force a window sash in
order to gain an entrance. He had never
known his wife to so securely fasten
the house, and, as he climbed through
the window, strange feeling of i'm
pending evil came over him.
Not, however, until he had gone into
the living room did the full meaning of
the sealed doors and windows burst
upon him. There, upon a pallet. nicely
| dIIduSGQ, Lay Ills lu4CC udlllllAS. QCdNls
and across the room, with her feet
turned TO theirs, was his wife, their
mother, also dead. A double-barreled
| breech-lOadIng shotgun, his companion
| on many jolly hunts, lay between them.
As near as can be learned from the sur
roundings, Mrs. Lochridge had drawn
up her children'S clothes, one by one,
| placed the gun against their hearts and
| fired. Then she placed them side by
| side on pallet. which she had made
| for the purpose. and arranged their
| dresses neatly about them. Standing at
| their feet, and probably gazing down
upon them, the distracted mother placed
the muZZle of the gun at her own heart
and sent her own soul to follow her
! children.
After killing the first two she must
! have reloaded the gun. and that she did
| this shows that she was at least partly
calm. How she pulled the trigger when
/ the gun was against her own breast is 4
| mystery. unless she did it with stick
| held in her hand or with her foot. 1t is
thought the woman poisoned or chloro-
/ formed both herself and the children be-
| fore she used the gun. In the letter,
| given in part below, she refers to pain
IN Ter side, and then it would have
! been difficult to have killed the little
things while wide awake. The follow
ing letter was found in the room with
the murdered babes and the suicide:
July.19, 1S9l.-Dear Tom: know you will
be shocked when you get pack and find what
have done. This is not my first attempt.
took forty drops of laudanum al one time
and sixty at another before was married,
and failed 10 accomplish my purpose, but
think l will succeed this time. If Eunice
oldest child had been at home last Sunday
evening this deed would have been commit
ted them. but she had gone to church. l
could not bear to leave her behind. 60
wish you could go with us. But for YOU
ould gladly, gladly give up all and 90
home to heaven. l sometimes feel thai l am
& terrible sinner, but now feel that the good
Lord is waning with the open door TO vel
come me and our little ones. You hive kept
your marriage vows so much mora peIfet I
than have, but you know that my health is
bad now. have been in bad state OF mind
some time. feel that am tired Of life ard
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