The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1840-07-24 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

AWFUL MURDER AND SUICIDE OF THE MURDERER, IN LAMBETH.  On Monday morning, about ten o'clock, the greatest consternation and horror were excited in the neighbourhood of St. George's Road, Lambeth, by the intelligence that the above tragical event had occurred at No. 4, Caroline Buildings, near West-street, West-square, Lambeth. The particulars obtained at the station house, in Tower-street, Lambeth, are as follow : The house in which this melancholy event took place is inhabited by a man named Wetherley, who obtains a precarious subsistence by showing a seal about the streets. Wetherley's wife some few days since left her home, and lived with a shoemaker named William Heeley. On Sunday night, the misguided woman changed her mind, and, meeting casually with her husband, she listened to his promises of forgiveness, and assurances of renewed comforts, and returned home. The husband kept his word, and not a syllable of her error was addressed by him to her ; and at an early hour on Monday morning, Wetherley quitted the house, with his seal and barrow. William Heeley, upcn assuring himself that he was deserted by his paramour, and that she had returned to her natural protector, vowed vengeance on her, and he was seen before light on Monday morning, trying the temper of a carving knife. At ten 'o'clock the neighbourhood was alarmed by piercing screams proceeding from the residence of Wetherley ; and before the cause could be discovered by breaking open the door, Mary Wetherley rushed out, with her throat dreadfully cut, and the blood gushing over her dress and upon the pavement around. The poor creature could not cry for assistance, the blood choking her utterance ; and, after running a few yards, she sunk dead on the ground.  The murderer now appeared at the door, and it was evidently his intention to follow his victim, and, if necessary, finish the deed ; but the sight of some of the neighbours caused him hastily to close the door—not before he had flourished the bloody knife, and with dreadful imprecations vowed instant death to any person who dared to follow or arrest him. The police now arrived, and, a forcible entrance being obtained, they proceeded to search for the murderer, whom they shortly after discovered lying upon the floor, with .his head, except a small portion of flesh, severed from his body. The place was all the forenoon perfectly inaccessible from the dense crowds congregated upon and around the spot, and multitudes were every minute arriving to obtain a glimpse of the scene of this tragic occurrence. The neighbourhood is a low and mean one, through which there is no thoroughfare ; and it is but a short distance from the spot where Oxford lodged. In the confusion which necessarily attends so horrible a transaction as this double deed of blood, it is very difficult to ascertain the precise facts of the case; and the different accounts received consequently disagree in some of the details. The brother of the unfortunate woman who has fallen a victim to the unhallowed passion of her paramour, states that Wetherley was a fishmonger; that formerly he was doing very well in that business, and was possessed of money ; but that, through his intemperate habits, he had latterly been very much reduced in his circumstances, and had hawked fish about the streets in the neighbourhood of Greenwich, where he and his wife had lived for the last three years. About two years ago, Heeley, who is a shoemaker, came up from the west of England, and took lodgings with Wetherley and his wife at Greenwich, where he attended to his business, without any thing occurring to disturb the harmony of the family beyond the occassional drunkenness of the husband. He had not, however, lived long with them before he became very much attached to Mrs. Wetherley, and, in the language of the brother of the deceased, " was so fond of her that he doated upon the very ground on which she stood." His attachment and attentions to the wife soon excited the  lealousy of Wetherley, and frequent quarrels among the three were the consequence. They still, however, continued to_ live together; and although both Vtrether . ley and his wife often attempted to induce Heeley to get lodgings elsewhere--for the poor woman was wearied with the constant dissentious to which his unfortunate attachment gave rise—he still persisted in retaining his ground, and would not be persuaded, by kind words or otherwise, to quit the house. Finding that all their efforts to eject him from the lodgings were useless, Wetherley and his wife agreed that they would take lodgings in London unknown to Heeley, and leave him in possession of the house at Greenwich. This they had done about a fortnight ago, to the great annoyance of the infatuated Heeley, who hnmediately resolved upon finding them out. On Saturday he met the wife in the neighbourhood of the New Cut, Lambeth, and tried to make her divulge the place of their retreat. This, however, she refused to do, and did all in her power to induce him not to persist in a course which interfered with the happiness of her husband and herself. He was bent .upon revenge, and on Monday morning dogged the steps of the husband home, by that means discovering their dwelling. He then watched him (the husband) out with his barrow an% seal, and thereupon proceeded to the house, when, finding the wretched woman alone, he despatched her as above described. The passage of the house in which the Wetherleys resided resembles the floor of a slaughter-house, deluged with blood, and_ the window-frame on the ground floor bears the marks  of the blood-stained hand of the ill-fated woman, whose first act, after she received the fatal wound, was to throw up the  window to alarm the neighbours. Heeley, after he had killed the woman, deliberately stood before the looking-glass, and cut his own throat from ear to ear. He then sat down iu a chair opposite the glass, but was seen by a pot-boy of a neighbouring public-house, almost immediately to fall lifeless from the chair. The wound in his own throat is one of the most desperate that could be inflicted by a man's own hand.