The Northern Guardian. — 1894-01-20 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

DOMESTIC TRAGEDY AT BRADFORD.  WIFE MURDER AND SUICIDE.  A distressing tragedy occurred yesterday :a Bradford. Thomas Bentley, aged 50, and his wife Sarah, aged 55, lived with two grown-np daughters and a son in the back-to-back house, No. 26, Bold shay Street, off Maperton Road. Yeitterdry morning the eon and daughters went to wurk as tuned, leaving the old people at home. About ten o'clock Mrs Bentley was seen outside the door, and shortly before eleven Bentley was in the street, looking very strange and worried in his nranuer. Nothing more was teen or heard of either again, until at 12.50 Thomas Bentley, the son, aged 18, came hone; to dinner. The door was locked, awl he surmised that his parents had gone out, but not. finding he key be became alarmed, awl finally forced an entrance to the house through the cellar gratiug. Gin opening the door at the head of the stairs he saw his mother lying dead on the floor, with her head battered in. The police were sent for, and search being made, Bentley was found in the gat ret hanging from a barn, a ith his feet almost touching the floor. The room in .which Mrs Bentley I lay was absolutely undisturbed, not a sign of a struggle being obserSable. It is cocject tired that she was preparing dime r, when a quarrel arose, awl Bentley suddenly struck her a terrific blow on the side of the head with a coal hammer, crashing in the side of the skull. She fell, and never moved afterwards. Then in savage frenzy he heat her head almost to a pulp, there being distinct marks of three other blows. He then appears to have determined on suicide. His first thought seems to have been to cut his throat, and with this idea he took a table knife, and going to the head of the cellar steps sharpened it carefully, but its edge did, not suit him, and he tried a second with a like result. Then he changed his mind and decided upon hanging himself. Obtaining a clothes-line he proceeded to the garret. In the beam • which supported the roof was a nail, and as this is bent, he seems to have attached the rope to it, jumping off a low chair on to the ground. But the nail, after bearing him for an instant, gave way. Ureter his ear is the mark which the rope then made. He returned to the room where his wife lay, and found in the tool box a bed-screw and a marhie.spike. Taking the coal hammer, which was covered with blood, he drove the marline-spike into the beam, drew it out, and then inserted the bed-screw, from which he succeeded in hanging himself. Police. constable Heaton having cut the body down, called in Drs. Grey and Lodge, who could do nothing but pronounce murderer and victim dead. The Corporation horse ambulance was telephened for, Avid as soon as possible the two bodies were remevelY to the mortuary, there to await the inquest which has been fixed for 11 15 on Monday. Bentley was a bandmaker in the employ of a firm of manufacturers in Hull Lane. Latterly work has fallen off, awl he has had for six or seven months little or nothing to do. A month ago this failed him entirely, and the reason as alleged by a fellow-workman was his strange and peculiar temper, which must have been really akin to madness. He was a teetotaller, and , a regular attendant at chapel, but he was subject ' to fits of frenzy and j. alousy. The wife was a respectable and hard-a orking woman, who made a little money towards keeping the home together by charing. She is said to have many relatives well connected in Leeds and Bradford, her maiden name being Grafton.