The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1890-08-23 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE CHESHIRE MURDER.  INTERVIEW WITH THE CULPRIT'S WIFE. A reporter on Saturday visited Alfranham, the locality in which the murder of the gamekeeper Bebbington mysteriously took place 33 years ago. Airs. Blagg, the widow of John Blagg, the suspected murderer who was executed, still lives in • cottage in the village, almost within • stone's throw of the scene of the tragedy. She is advanced in years, and is in poor circumstances, but is able to earn a few shillings as a teacher or caretaker of her neighbour's little children. The reporter interviewed this old lady, and in reply to questions she told him some interesting facts which throw a new light upon the affair and afford better ground for judgment on the question of her husband's guilt. That he was concerned in the murder, though it is not clear who actually used the gun, one is almost led to believe from what she herself says, though she has always said he was innocent. "On the night before the murder," she said, 'there came a rap at the door, when Blagg and I were together. I opened the door, and there tyasJim Jones. I never did like that man. I asked him what be wanted, and he called my husband outside. I wondered what was ' and when Blagg came in again I asked him, and he said, 'Oh, nothing.' Well, he got his boots from where they were usually kept, and gave them to Jones. Jones came inside and, took off his clogs, and left them in our house."  "His C-l-co-gs?"-: You; he very seldom wore clogs, but he had them on when he came to our house that night. 'Do you think he was laying a plot?'—" I can't say," replied Mrs. Blegg, "but I never liked the man. They did not tell me anything." "Did you suspect that anything wrong would be done?"—" Not then," 'Now this is the point," asked the reporter, "was your husband home throughout that night?" Mrs. Nogg readily replied in the affirmative, but in answer to another question said he got up, she thought, at about four o'clock in the morning. She supposed he went out, but when she got up—between six and seven o'clock—he was sitting in the kitchen, having lighted a fire and prepared breakfast. There NMI nothing unusual in his manner, appearance, or movements. tivo no received his boots back? Yes. She could not say how or where he had received them back. She heard of the murder a couple of hours afterwards. Before the police came for her husband she saw them pass with Jones, who looked pale and agitated. But they did not keep him, she added. They only wanted her husband as they 'had it in" for him. Asked why Blagg was at all suspected, the old lady said that various etories were going about the village, one of which was that her husband had been heard to swear he would shoot the gamekeeper. It was not true, she was perfectly sure, for he would not do the slightest injury to anyone—he was snob an inoffensive man. Mrs. Blagg was able to tell from memory all the details respecting the actual arrest of her husband, who offered no resistance, and simply said he was innocent, although his own gun and his own boots had been need.  It seemed to pain the old lady to recall the farewell scene on the day before the execution, when she, with their little daughter (deceased), interviewed the condemned Man at Chester Castle. She can never forget his words, "I am as innocent as that child. I have not had justice. They have gone against me just as they liked, ancrthey might as well have hanged me on the nearest oak. Bat never mind; I intend to go to the scaffiold, for I shall never tell." She asked him if there was anything she might possibly do jot him, and he replied, "No; you hare a bit of money. It will be of no use to me now. It will be of use to you. Don't part with it for my sake." "Did beaver say he knew how it was done ? " "No," answered Mrs. Blagg; "bat be did say to me at one interview that if be disclosed all he knew he would be transported for life, and he would prefer instant death." The old lady pathetically concluded her interesting story in the words, "And now after thirty three long years, when it was let alone as a thing to be forgotten and buried in time, it has riten up again in this new form. 1 would rather it were let alone." Mrs. Maga turned away in tears.