The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser. — 1880-08-06 (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

THE SKIPTON TRAGEDY.  Henry Blades was tried at Leeds Assizes for the murder of his wiM' Margaret Blades, at Skipton in May last. Mr. Lockwood and Mr. Fenwiek prosecuted, and Mr. E. Tindal Atkinson and Mr. Slingsby defended. The case was a painful one. The p.isoner's wife was a very dissipated woman, and on Sstinday, the end of May, she was away all day. Tin • prisoner law a woman named Fagan on the evening of that day and asked her if she had seen his wile. Mrs. Fagan said she had. The prisoner asked if she was drunk. Mrs. Fagan replied. •• No: she's had a little drop, bat she does not all anything." The prisoner's daughter, a bright little girl of 12, stated that her mother came home about eleven o'clock, and was followed half an hour afterwards by her father. She heard her father in the ad joining bedroom ask her ;other where she had been, and she told him it was nothing to him. This was followed by a blow and a low murmuring noise, which lasted about half an hour and then teased. The girl aid her brothers and sisters cried on hearing the blow, "Father, don't hurt mother!" and the father went into their room. and said if they did not make less noise he wuuld kill them. Next morning the father called his children up, and waited in the room until they were dressed. He told them their mother was ill, aid he kept guard over the bedroom dour, and would Hut let them go in. The oaughter asked him if her neither Wllti dead, and the prisoner said, "Get out; what are you talking that silly talk for i" At dinner time he took something to eat upstairs, and said tile wi es had eaten it, but his daughter saw hint through the niche of the door eat it himself. In the course of the afternoon he got a rope and hung it on a nail in the cei.ing. The child asked him what he was duiog that tor, and he said "To hang something on." Afterwards he wrote on an envelope the following •—"llear Friends,—l do hope you will never let my poor children go to the workhouse; fur t ey will do some one good. No finer children burn in the world than they for working: so I hope to the Lord you will do your best to them, and I think they will do the same to you. It is heart-breaking to leave them: but we must part, so I hope it will be a warning to you all not to get in the same fate as this. to I hope you will do your best to my children, for it is hard work pirtiug with them. They are standing over meas am writing, se I will say no more, for my heart is bursting to see them. I cannot live any longer the way things is going on, so I will bid you all goodbye, hopingto live in peace, for it has been & troublesome life, and I hope all friends will look over it, so I remain your sorrowful heart, good-bye to all." Towards night the children got away and told some relations, who found the deceased lying in bed, having evidently been strangled. In the meantitue the prisoner ran away, and was found several days afterwards hiding in an outbuilding somewhere in the neighbourhood. He said to the policeman who captured him, "it was not wilful." The defence was that the deceased had been choked by the mucous L.:lowing on the irritation produced by injury to the larynx emitted by the defendant seizing his wife's Han at in a struggle.—The jurf fund the prisoner guilty of manslaughter, and he was sentenced to 20 years' penal servitude.