Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1861-08-30 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THZ BODY OF THE MURDERER.—It has just been discovered that the murderer, Thomas Harvey, lias added suicide to the crirde of matricide. Between four and five on Thursday, the 22nd. inst., his body was discovered hanging in a tree hardly a hundred yards from the back of his mother's premises. The tree is situate in a-field in the occupation of Mr Stephen Smith, and is of great altitude. A thrashing machine has beeu at work in the field all the week; in the afternoon Mr Smith thought he saw one of his men in the tree, and on closer inspection detected the body of the murderer hanging amongst the foliage on a bough nearly 30 feet from the ground. Every precaution was taken, and ultimately the body was lowered by a rope to the ground. It presented appearances of having been there since directly after the murder ; and the trouble the murdersr had to reach his spot of self. execution was well illustrated by that others had to follow him. The inquest was opened on Friday at the Plough, at Ditton, before Mr Barlow, the coroner for the county. In the course of the morning, numbers of people visited the place where the body was found. Here (about 200 yards from his mother's house) stands a handsome elm tree, and to a bongh of this the body was hanging at the height of about 39 feet from the ground. Beneath the tree was the hammer with which the murder was committed, a labourer's ordinary knife open, with a blade about four inches long, the blade nearly covered with blood ; also a piece of the suicide's scarf, about 6 or 8 inches long. The murderer had evidently ascended the tree and put an end to his existence with the remaining piece of his scarf. The piece of the scarf with which he hanged himself was only sufficient to give him a fall of about a foot, and his death agony must consequently have been a most protracted one; indeed, the body, which was lying in an outhouse at the Plough, gave sufficient evidence of this. One of the most extraordinary parts of the matter is that about a dozen men were at work close under the tree (but in an adjoining field) for several days, and a straw stack was built up close to and nearly the height of the body without the latter being seen. The jury returned a verdict of .telo de se. Mrs 'Witta is mending slowly. She is sensible at times, and being inforeed that the murderer was found dead, expressed herself to the effect that her mind was eased of fear of his return. The poor woman is frightfully disfigured, however ; one cut from the sharp end of the hammer has severed both lips and gums, and knocked nearly all her teeth out.  The other day a photographer in Elgin having mislaid the address of a young man in Forres, to whom he was to have forwarded half-a-dozen copies of his portrait taken in calotype, adopted the expedient of posting one of the likenesses on the packet and sending it through the post-office. The letter deliverer had no difficulty in finding the owner of the likenesses. The post-mortem examination of a Mille. Leprovost, who died suddenly at Caen last week, the very day before she was to take her trial for embezzlement when post-mistress at Courseulles, has shown that she committed suicide by thrusting pins and needles into her chest. The heart had been pierced in many places, and two needles were also found crossing each other in her throat. She had used the cover of her prayer book to force them into her body.