Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1879 — Remarkable Tragedy. [ARTICLE]

Remarkable Tragedy.

An extraordinary tragedy was enacted a few days ago at Schwelm, in Prussian Westphalia. Two lads of 13 and 16, whose father and mother had died a few months since, and after their bereavement had lived with their maternal grandfather, were found on the 30th of July dead and horribly mutilated in their bedroom. From the text of a written declaration found on a table in the room, and signed by the elder boy, it appeared that both lads had resolved to die, finding life unendurable without their parents, and had concerted the means of their death, and having set down upon paper their wishes with respect to the disposal of their clothes, books, and playthings. The elder boy had shattered his brother’s head with a hammer, using such force that the unfortunate child’s skull was beaten in and his brains scattered over the floor. After deliberately slaughtering his brother, the youthful murderer took poison, opened the veins in his left wrist with a razor, and discharged a bullet into his forehead from a revolver. The grandfather of these wretched lads was absent from home upon a business trip at the

time of the catastrophe, and the elder boy had sent all of the servants out of the house before commencing his deadly operations. Consequently the dire deed was not suspected until next morning, when the housekeepor knocked at the door of the room in which the brothers slept together, and, obtaining no answer, fetched a locksmith to pick the lock, and, upon obtaining access to the bedroom, found her young masters dead and cold, weltering in their own blood. Had they lived to years of discretion, they would both have become possessed of ample means; and, oddly enough, though they had taken extraordinary pains to dispose of their childish belongings, no mention was made by either of them in the document found upon their table of the con - siderable inheritance to which they would have been entitled upon coming of age. It appears that they were exceptionally amiable children, doted upon by their old grandfather, and oxr tremely popular among their school mates. —London Telegraph.