Widnes Examiner. — 1886-05-22 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

TERRIBLE TRAGEDY AT KIRKHAM : THREE CHILDREN MURDERED BY THEIR FATHER. On Saturday night a policeman named Alfred Bligh, stationed at Kirkham, after sending his housekeeper out, locked the door of his house and proceeded with remarkable deliberation to murder his three children by strangling them, after which he battered in their skulls with a hatchet, and then gashed his own throat with a razor. When the housekeeper returned she found Bligh lying upon a bed with his children, who were dead. Upon an alarm being given. thetman jumped up and rushed to tie window, through which he sprang, and in the fall sustained a severe wound on his head. There is not the least liklihood of his recovery. He had been a widower for eight months and it is believed that his mind had become unsettled by the death of his wife. In the room where the shocking tragedy was enacted a letter written by Bligh was found. In it he wrote: "I as driven to do this. I could stand it no longer. Bury us all in.. ene grave with my wife." Further inquiry has brought out the followtng facts :—Pelice-constable Alfred Bligh, the perpetrator of the crime, who is now hovering between life and death, is a native of Norfolk, and about 30 yeara of age, of medium height, and a man of much deter • mination and pluck, but subject to violent outbreaks of temper. He joined the county constabulary in Oc— tober, 185;3. haring just left a situation as coachman at Oldham, where he had married Elizabeth Turner, his late wife. Unfortunately he was in debt when he left Oldham, and had been summoned to the comity court of that town for a debt of about La. This era pears to some extent to have rendered his married. life unhappy, with the fact that he had ascertained that his wife had had two children previous to her marriage, of which he was not aware until about eighteen moaths after that event. On the death of his wife in childbed, in December, 1884, he induced his sister-in-law, Annie Turner, then living at Westhoughton, near Bolton, to come and keep house for him, and this led to an intimacy which resulted in the birth of a child. The pollee authorities insisted that she should at ones leave the police quarters inhabited by Blidaand she did so. As he some time ago ceased to cona tribute to the maintenance of the child the womantook affiliation proceedings against him, and the sum— mons was to have been heard at Bolton on Thursday. This circumstance, his dismissal from the police formes the certain consequence, and the distressing state of his affairs generally, seem to have had a depressing effect upon the man's mind. The wound in Bligh'st neck, inflicted with a razor after murdering his threechildren, has not divided any artery, though many ; large blood vessels are severed, and as he can take foci it is now believed that he will recover. Four letterEt were wrif-teu by Bligh on Saturday tight, while Mrs. Pickford wag prepiaing tile children for bed, two are addressed to a sister at Aslatoei; under-Lyne, one of them containing two policies of insurance in the Police Insurance Club, for £5O and. £6O respectively. Another was to a girl in service in. Lytham; and the fourth letter is believed to have been sent to a sister at Oldham. The letter to hissister at Ashton-under-Lyne runs thus :17, Freckleton-street, Dear Sister,—You will be surprised when you receive these policlea and letter, but you can come as so•Aa as you rec:iye them, as there wi I only be trouble vrheu you receive these that is enclosed. I have had to resign the police force through Annie Turner. the has summoned ins to father a child, and have had to leave threu,:h her, and I think I am doing what is right. If not, God will forgive me. I have bad nothing else but trouble sinoe I got rnarried. I am in the Police Insurance Club, and I have made you my nominee, and there will be plenty to bury us .11 and keep father in the club. I am a little behind, but you you vrt.l have plenty to keep it no, end bury us in the same grave as Lizze [his late wife). I owe Mrs. rickford £3; she can eh ker have toe furniture or you cast pay her the money ; and put a gravestone over us. With Loeb to all, hoping to meet you in a better world tome day,