Elizabeth Town Gazette

SALEM, (Mass.) Oct. 16.

Horrid Murder.—On Monday afternoon last an awful murder, almost too shocking in its circumstances to describe or believe, was committed in Marblehead. The perpetrator was a young man, by the name of David A. Phillips, about 23 years of age; and the victim, his own wife, only 19, just got to bed of her first child. The man, it is said, had before discovered a malignant temper; and he seized the opportunity of a moment when the nurse was out of the room, (affecting some doubts, of which the character of the woman did not afford the shadow of a justification, of the legitimacy of the child,) and aimed a blow with a hammer at the infant's head, which however was shielded by the arm of its mother, against whom the monster's fury was then turned, and he gave her a severe blow on her temple, together with several others on the head, and then cut her throat with a knife; the woman was however able to spring from her bed, and with her child in her arms to run below stairs, where the first person she met was her own mother. The alarmed family and neighbours, on rushing into the chamber from whence Mrs. Phillips had escaped, found the husband standing against the wall, profusely bleeding, having in the interim attempted to execute justice on himself by cutting his own throat. Mrs. Phillips lingered till Wednesday, on which day she died. The fatal wound was the blow on the temple, the cut not being so deep as to be mortal. His own wound, we are told, is healing, and his life likely to be prolonged for severer trials; but we understand he discovers no compunction for the horrid deed, and continues in the same vindictive temper in which he committed it. The palliation of insanity is pleaded for him by some, and humanity would wish that this, rather than ungovernable passion the parent of the worst of crimes, might be the cause and his defence.