Swansea and Glamorgan Herald, and South Wales Free Press. — 1889-10-23 (Swansea, West Glamorgan, Wales)

HORRIBLE TRAGEDIES IN HUNGARY.  Domestic tragedies have been rather numerous in Hungary of late, but nothing recently reported equals in horror an affair which has just occurred in the town of Debreczin. In that place there was living, in pretty good circumstances, the family of aM. Andreas Moriez, consisting of a grandmother, her son Andreas, his second wife, and their two children, one of whom, a son, was a sergeant in the Honved Army, and the other a well-educated, pretty daughter. Quarrels arose about a ion by the first wife, and H. Andreas Honer having maltreated his wife and daughter in the presence of his son, the soldier, the latter attacked his father with a hatchet and killed him. Soldiers in this country are tried, even for common crimes, by court-martial, with closed doors, and as to the result of the trial all that was known was that Sergeant Moriez had been sentenced to death, and his case submitted to the Emperor for the requisite confirmation of the capital sentence. The widow and her daughter had several private audiences of the Archduke Joseph, the Commander in Chief of the Honved Army, besides an audience of the Emperor during •• • g his Majesty's recent visit to Hungary, and • plored for pardon for the condemned man ; but ' the only reply they received was that the case would be properly investigated, and the result communicated .to them. As a matter of fact, his Majesty's decision has not yet been taken. The two women, who had been waiting a long time for news, received a letter from Pesth ou Friday, which is now in the hands of the court, but not published, but which, it is suspected, contained a false statement to the effect that their petition for pardon had been rejected. At all events, immediately after receiving this letter, the girl, whose age was nineteen, went out and bought a quantity of cartridges for a revolver they had in the house. She told the shopkeeper that she wanted them in order to practice shooting on a small estate belonging to the family, some distance out of the town. On returning home she at once procured the revolver, and without delay sent a bullet through the right temple of her mother, and immediately afterwards shot herself through the temple. On the neighbours rushing in they found the girl lying in a pool of blood, grasping the revolver in her hand, near her mother, who appears to have been sitting on the sofa when she was shot, and to have fallen afterwards on to the floor. Thus of the whole family of five who appeared quite happy and prosperous last year, the only persons left are the aged grandmother and the soldier under sentence of death. The funeral of the last two victims to this domestic quarrel attracted an enormous crowd. While all this was going on in Dehreczin, another similar tragedy was being enacted not far away. At Szegediu, a small landed proprietor has killed his father and step-mother with a revolver, and afterwards attempted suicide. In this latter, however, he failed. In a third tragedy, just reported, a lithographer living near Pesth has killed his son. It is only a fortnight ago that I had to report the case of Town Councillor Huber, of Waitzen, who, in a fit of drunkenness, killed his mother.