The Central Glamorgan Gazette, and General, Commercial, and Agricultural Advertiser. — 1877-07-06 (Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, Wales)

SHOCKING WIFE MURDER AT WOLVER HAMPTON.  At heaf-past four o'clock on Friday, June 29th, Henry Rogers, aged 27, bricklayer and plasterer, of Little Berry street, Wolverhampton, went to the police station and made the following confession:—" I have come to give myself up for murdering my wife. She lies near the haystack in the first field leading to the nineteenth pond in the Whitmore Roans. She has got her head half cut off. You will have to take something with you." This last remark was understood to impiy that the corpse was so mutilated that it would be difficult to remove it. And this was found to be the case. Surrounded by a. great quantity of blood, the murdered woman lay, with her head attached to the rest of the body only by a slight integument oq the left side of the neck; otherwise the head was wholly severed. But this was not all. The otherwise wounded state of the corpse showed that there had been a fierce struggle before the murder was effected. There was a terrible wound upon the forehead, extending across the forehead and about the scalp, and one of the woman's fingers had been cut off. Near by there lay her child, an infant of eighteen months, sleeping peacefully amongst the loose hay; for the rick was in process of being cut up and trussed. Close at hand was the weapon with which the murder had been committed—a razor smeared with blood, and the long hairs of a wonian's head adhering to it. The murderer's clothing was much soiled with blood, particularly his left trouser leg; as though he had been kneeling in blood. His hands he told the police he had washed in a neighbouring stream; and the appearance of his clothes would seem to indicate that he had at first attempted to cleanse them of blood stains. He said he had murdered her "because he had seen her walking with other men." When the police, having satisfied themselves that this confession was only too true, charged him in the usual form his only reply was: "She was a frightful object, wasn't she ?" The pair, with their child, seem to have spent the night by the side of the rick—that place of sleeping, the police infer, being chosen by Rogers in view of the murder. He VIPS brought during the forenoon before the Wolverhampton Stipendiary, and remanded. lie is well dressed for his station, and is good looking; but bears a bad cha' meter. At 12 years of age he was sent for three yearsto a reformatory, and has since that time been several times in custody. Indeed he is now under remand, on his own recognisances, charged with stealing a watch from a brother-in-law. He is of a roving disposition, I and has just returned from the north of England. The murdered woman is only 22 years of age. She was Sarah Jane Mitchell, of Wombourne, near Wolverhampton. The murderer has cbnfessed to his sister that he attempted the murder on his way to the field, but his wife's resistance was too much for him. He awoke soon after three o'clock in the morning, and found both wife and child sleeping,l and began the murder as his wife lay slumbering. His wife, he says, had arranged to leave Wolverhampton with another man on the Saturday. Before he gave himself up he went to a married sister and his mother, and told them, also showing blood on his clothes.