The Herald of Wales. — 1888-09-29 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

SHOCKING WIFE MURDER AT BIRMINGHAM.. . _ SPLENDID SPECIMEN OF TO • BIRMINGHAM ECRTGI96 " Between nine and ten o'clock ote Saturday evening, smart named Geetinee,•Nieholem, a A Central Newt telegram from Brume '4, 0,, jeureeymai beker bw.brnde, after spending the petday, Bays : —an °thew eue.ftege horn the day in tavera-buntiug, wait seen to enter hie Congo reports that Mr J P. lameison t-i il at wife's hone in Burlington-street, Ashton, Bengal& Station on Aligned 17th Any let thee and shortly hermit& the neighbours heard expedition for the ri let of 'itanley is now sounds of al Hon betliiinien igkwife, . .. in the oou of cvhich hopeless. De's eite. . . heard declaring that he souti not pay Mr P. 8' M°Dlll°'"' 'el the Melba''lle' `Ofgheeenefeenow for hie night'e loa.i. ' Belief eegspeeninittak writ •Re follows to the , • : • , London paper. of Momlay i wife insisted on having two ',billing :—.,R erref—TiVTir my An explanation of this curious ditionnion, it is nommunteeti(n of yesiterclay'e data, I amd.eid. ded , skated that Nicholson, who had been& twice prety the,esernmittee to send you the followin! mauled, was a moo of intemperate and . additional melange reeeived from We 5 improvident habits, and that his wife hying to fro. Loando : .Barttelot's 4eptti litoka, suot Cern her own livlihood by the all. of a Mangle expedition. MenZemee,aiellugtea: J °Lee, e: w compelled for her own protection to treat r•f'c'eted =yr° li° only man °mile'', "' lc as a lodger anti melte him pay hi. footing t: watunand. manyem&A B..nY and (sic) retaining w iis be passed Hi night under her roof. loads. Yaroomiahn close Stanley Finen many fvlortly after this dieoussion the neighboure men and loads asieelug. Awaiting reply. re startled by a noise &inch as might be caused Lissodo. Ware." bi the'ovetbarning of a chair, and then Nicholson's halting gait was heard pinging from the back patient-, in which the altercation took pima, through the front room and into the street. Immediately afterwards the neighbours' attention was attracted by a stertorous noise from the house, which led one of them to rem irk that Mrs Nicholson must be in liquor. But few minutes hail elapsed after the departure of Nicholson when hie wife'a son and daughter by a former marriage entered the .... house, and promptly rushed out again with an - exclamation that their mother was inardereil. . The unfortunate woman was seated in a roeltin g I chair, saturated with blood whieh streamed I from a ghastly opening in her skull. Though evidently unconscious she was still breathing heavily in the manner that had attracted the neighbours' attention, but before medical assistance could be procured life was extinct. The skull had evidently been shattered by a violent downward blow with some heavy, pointed weapon, and a hurried eciareh in the neighbouring kitchen soon revealed the probable instrument, in the shape of a bloodetained coal-hatchet, which the murderer had eviiiently taken from Its usual renting. place in the eupboard. The deceased woman's purse had disappeared together with her watch and chain, bat otherwise the property in the house had uot been disturbed. Suspicion at once fall upon the missing husband, whose strained relations with his wife were sufficiently notorious, and this suspicion was not a tittle stretigthened by the discovery, in the course of the evening, that the watch and chain had been newly pledged with a 1)051 pawnbroker for 23e by a man corresponding in appearance with Nicholson. No time was lost in giving the alarm and emulating descriptions of the suspected murderer, and these efforts were shortly crowned with success by the arrest of the man on Sunday evening at Walsall. Nicholson, it seems, had taken train for that town by the 10.65 train on Saturday evening. When arrested he unwarily strengthened the ease against himself by denying his identity, and the police do not attach much more importance to his subsequent repudiation of the crime, in view of the strong chain of intear dent eircumetanees which connect him with it; and especially his altercation with his wife, the noise of violence, followed by his hurried departure from the house, his unexplained nocturnal journey to Walsall, hia pawning of the watch and chain, the fresh blood stains on his clothes, arid, lastly, his denial of his own identity. Nicholson, we are afraid, will find it no easy matter to explain sway theme sinieter facts, and to shift the dreadful charge which now hangs over him on to the shoulders of a third and at present unknown and mouspecte A person.  Casn  A