Shocking tragedy--murder and Suicide.
--A German physician, named Brietlauch, residing at
Tinkerville, Pa., murdered his wife on Friday, and then blew out his own brains.
The
Pittsburg Gazette says:
‘
He had been married twice.
By his first wife he had two sons, Christian and Charles — the former 20 years of age, and the latter 15.--By his second wife he had two daughters — Mary, 12 years of age, and
Julia, 4 or 5 years of age. The father had always exhibited a partiality for the issue of his first wife, much to the annoyance and displeasure of his last, who had a mother's feelings, and wished her own children to be caressed as much as the others.
The domestic troubles growing out of this state of affairs often led to violence.
On Friday, he went into the room where his wife was, and hurt his foot (he had no shoes on) on a spool which the youngest child had been using.
This threw him into a headlong passion, in the transports of which he slapped the offending child severely in the face.
A quarrel ensued between him and his wife, which only increased his irascible temper, and finally induced him, in the heat of it, to repair to his office for his gun. This was a German piece, intended either for shot or ball, and he returned with it into his wife's room, determined, as the sequel proved, to take her life.
Pointing it at her, he ordered her up stairs.
She did not obey at first, and be proceeded to cock the gun. Finding him fatally bent on mischief, she started to leave the room, and had nearly reached the stairs, when he fired and she fell on her face, the ball with which the gun was loaded entering the right side of her chest, and producing almost instant death.
’
He then went again into his office, and procuring another single-barrelled gun, returned to the room and stood looking at his wife weltering in her blood.
After gazing at the sad spectacle for a moment, he put the muzzle of the piece he held into his mouth and fired, thus following his wife to their final account after a very brief interval.
The house in which they lived was a comfortable frame.
They occupied only a portion of it, but enough to afford them very comfortable quarters.
In their sitting room they had mahogany chairs with hair cushions, and a handsome
book-case stood next the hall, filled with what appeared to be expensive
surgical instruments.
He had stated to the neighborhood that he was a surgeon in the
Dutch army for 15 years. A Christmas tree which stood in the room, decked with toys and other symbols of the holiday, formed a mournful contrast to the scene of blood with which it was surrounded.
