NARRATIVE OF LAW AND CRIME. EDMUND FRANCIS HUNT, a plasterer, of Bath, Drowned himself and an Infant Child on the 2nd. Hunt was industrious and well-conducted, but his wife wasteful, drunken, and dishonest: she had several times been imprisoned for theft. This preyed on the husband's mind: in autumn last, when she was in gaol, where she was delivered of a child, he threatened that if she ever again committed a robbery, he would destroy himself. On the 2nd she was taken into custody for shoplifting, and a neighbour informed Hunt of this at night. Hunt, who had been drinking a little, became excited, and hastened home. At the inquest, his son deposed: "As soon as father came home, he asked, Where's mother?' and I told him I did not know. My little sister, who was up stairs in bed, then called out Father!" My father told me to go up stairs and fetch her. I gave him my sister, and asked him to come up to bed. He told me to go up to bed, and said he should not see my face any more. When in bed I heard my father go out and shut the back-door. I then heard him say some thing to my sister, but I could not understand what it was. My sister was two-and-a-half years old. She was my only sister, and my father was particularly fond of her. He liked her better than all the rest of us, and often had her brought down stairs to him when he came home." The river Avon flowed at the back of the house, and thither he proceeded with his child. Their bodies have since been found in the stream-the child's near Bristol. The verdict of the coroner's jury was "Temporary Insanity."

Two children were Drowned at Exeter on the night of Saturday, the 2nd. Elizabeth Bradford, the wife of a joiner, was seen walking towards the ship-basin, with her three children; some time after, a man heard a splashing in the water, and he pulled a little boy out of the basin, still alive; the mother said he must have fallen in. But it was reported that the two little girls of the woman were missing; next morning the police dragged the basin, and the bodies of the children were found. Elizabeth Bradford was arrested, in a wild and frantic state. The coroner's jury have returned an open verdict, to the effect that the children were "found downed," but how they came into the water there was no evidence to show.

At the Surrey Sessions, on the 4th, two women, one aged twenty, and the other thirteen, were tried for Stealing a Sheep at Addington, near Croydon. Their apprehension was mentioned in our last Number. The evidence clearly made out that they had taken the sheep from a number of others in a fold, cut and wrenched its head off, skinned the body, and torn it to pieces; and were stopped when carrying the meat away at night. They were both convicted. The woman, a bad character, was sentenced to ten years' transportation; the girl, to a year's imprisonment.

The verdict was "Guilty," with a recommendation to mercy. He was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, with hard labour.

Thomas Cox, a boy of nine years old, was killed on the 6th, by Falling into an old Coal-pit. He left home on the morning with his father to work in a coal-pit, near Darlaston, in Staffordshire. In passing through a field, near Potter's Bridge, his hat blew off. The morning was dark and windy, and whilst in search of it he fell into an old pit exposed without any fence round or over it. He was brought up, his head fractured, both his legs broken, dreadfully crushed, and quite dead. A public road passes within twenty yards of the pit, and there is no fence against either the road or the pit, which is about thirty-five yards deep. There are two or three other pits near, in an equally dangerous state. The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental Death;" expressing an opinion that "there had been great want of proper attention and care on the part of the occupier of the pit in question, in not having seen that it was properly protected."

Mr. W. H. Apperley, a land-agent, was Attacked by Highwaymen on the 7th. Whilst returning in the evening from Abergavenny towards Hereford in his gig alone, he was stopped by three men in a lonely part of the road. Perceiving that resistance was useless, and having a sum of money upon his person, he leaped from the gig over the fence down into a strip of land adjoining the river, the field being here many feet below the road; almost before he regained his feet, he heard the horse and gig roll over the fence also. He ran for assistance, and found three men at home in a cottage not three hundred yards distant, who immediately returned with him; they found the horse and gig (the latter doubtless upset in its passage over the fence) near the river. The highwaymen had followed the gig down the place, and ransacked the contents; but the only booty they obtained was a letter-case, and about five or six French coins. Not the least damage was sustained by either horse, gig, or harness.

At the Central Criminal Court, on the 8th, Margaret Higgins and Elizabeth Smith were indicted on a charge of robbing Mr. Frederick Hardy Jewett, a solicitor, after having Stupified him with Chloroform. Between nine and ten o'clock on the evening of Jan. 10th, whilst proceeding slowly along the Whitechapel Road, he felt somebody, he believed a woman, touch his left side, and a rag or handkerchief pressed over the lower part of the face. He became insensible until the following morning, when he slowly revived, and found himself lying on a very dirty bed in a wretched apartment, and in a complete state of nudity, with the exception of an oid piece of rag which had been carelessly thrown over him. Some of his clothes were in the room; other articles had been stolen, with his watch, jewellery, and money. His trowsers were muddy, as if he had been dragged through the streets. The door of the room was fastened by a padlock outside; he found the key on the floor; he George Wild, a policeman of the M Division, was pushed it under the door to a potman who happened to tried on the 5th for Stealing Rabbit-Skins. Much in- be in the house, and was thus liberated. He found that terest was excited on account of the antecedents of the he had been conveyed to a low lodging-house in Thrall accused: he had been in the police ten years, had held Street, Spitalfields. Policemen and other witnesses gave a high character, and was very active in detecting evidence The women rented the room; when arrested, crime; through his means thirty persons have been they accused each other. Higgins had been heard to say transported, and more than a hundred summarily con- that she had "done" the robbery. She told a woman victed for robbery. Mrs. Sinnetts, a furrier, occupied that a man named Gallagher, with whom she cohabited, some cellars in Southwark as warehouses for skins; it had undergone an operation at the London Hospital, was suspected that the place was robbed; application where they had given him some stuff to send him to sleep, was made to Wild, and he undertook to investigate the and that he had contrived to bring some of it away with matter. To attempt to catch the thieves, he and one of him. The jury returned a verdict of "Guilty," and the Mrs. Sinnett's sons watched at night; and eventually prisoners were sentenced to be transported for fifteen Wild was left in the place by himself. An air-hole years. It is doubtful whether the unfortunate gentleman communicated from one of the cellars with the Cross-will ever recover from the effects of the treatment he bones burial-ground. The prisoner appears to have thrust a number of skins through this hole; then he got admission through a house into the ground, and took away a bag-full of skins; but as the tenant of the house suspected and questioned him, he took the bag and part of the skins to Mrs. Sinnett's son, pretending that a robber had thrust them into the grave-yard, and that he had noticed the articles through the railings. A number of skins were found in a yard near Wild's lodging, and there was no doubt he threw them there.

suffered.

At the Surrey Sessions, on the 9th, Charlotte Wilson was indicted for a Similar Offence. Mr. Barnet Lea, whilst passing St. George's Church, in the Borough, on the evening of the 1st of January, was accosted by the prisoner. On telling her to go about her business, she suddenly passed a handkerchief across his face, and he became very unwell. Not suspec ing any narcotic in the handkerchief, he ran into a public-house close by, and called for a glass of brandy; but before he could drink

John Baguley, aged 70, who died at Chilwell, near Nottingham, on the 16th, Confessed on his death-bed that 23 years ago he murdered a hawker, and robbed him of shawls, blankets, &c., and disposed of the body. At the period of his sudden disappearance, the murdered of 207. damages.

At a Protection Meeting at Dorchester, on the 20th, a Violent Affray took place between the farmers and the freetraders; and a young man, named Allen, was killed by a struck down blow by one of the farmers. He died in the County Hospital a few days afterwards. It has not been discovered who inflicted the blow.

A case of Extraordinary Credulity was disclosed at the Islington County Court on the 23rd, when a poor Irish girl, named Sullivan, sought to recover the sum of 47. 15s. from a man named Taylor. She stated that she was in respectable service at Hoxton, and met the defendant nine weeks back, when he suddenly pretended to admire her, telling her she resembled a sister who had died, and asked her to favour him with her company for a walk, as he was a single man and anxious to get married. She believed his representations, and he continued paying his addresses to her until a fortnight ago, when he induced her to obtain leave of absence from her mistress for a day and a night, for the purpose of taking her to Shoreditch church to be married. Her mistress granted her request, and she met the defendant, who took her to the church, which was closed, when, on his entreaty, she accompanied him to a beer-shop in Whitecross-street, where several men and women, who, he said, were his relatives, induced her to jump over a broom, and go through other mock ceremonies of marriage, under an impression that it was legal; and she parted with the amount now claimed, fully believing that he was her lawful husband. After enjoying herself in his company and that of his friends, during the day at the beer-shop, she accompanied him to his lodgings for the night, and went to her service in the morning, when she mentioned to her mistress that she had practised a deception on her in obtaining permission of absence, and then detailed the above extraordinary circumstances, which reaching her master's ears, he adopted the present proceedings, and convinced her of the cruel trick of which she had become the victim. The Judge expressed his surprise that the girl's master had not handed over the defendant to be dealt with criminally, which he most richly deserved; before giving judgment, an officer of the court was sent to her master, and ascertained the truth of her statement. The Judge ordered the defendant to pay the money and costs in a week.

savings-banks made the trustees and managers vigilant; and as the accounts tendered them showed that the amount of deposits had decreased of late years, though the neighbourhood was increasing in prosperousness, they resolved to examine the pass-books. On learning this resolve, Mr. Johnson admitted that he had also received a government notice ordering the same step. This precipitated a disclosure. William Johnson informed the trustees that money had been misappropriated by his brother, and that he had falsified accounts by his brother's direction; but he declared that this had been done during the past year only, and to the amount of but 1500. As the examination of the books proceeded, it was found that these declarations were untrue. The malversations have amounted to about 10,0007., and have been carried on for about seventeen years. The accounts tampered with were principally those of friendly societies. A person who was a depositor before the alteration of the law restricted the amount of deposits, had paid in 8007. Johnson appropriated the whole. The original trustees and managers having mostly died, it was only within the last few years that their places were supplied; the attendance to check the books became a mere irregular form; unlimited confidence was placed in the popular Mr. Johnson; and "at last the bank degenerated into an institution managed by Mr. Johnson for his own purposes." Hence the impunity for his frauds. Mr. John Johnson lived in a most expensive style, was very hospitable, and spent much money upon his conservatories. Fortunately, both the brothers have property; and they have made it over to the trustees of the bank: it is expected that it will be sufficient to meet the deficiency. Mr. John Johnson has been arrested on a charge of embezzlement, his brother for conspiracy and aiding. The private book, in which the frauds were noted, has been found, and is likely to show the true nature of the bank transactions.-Mr. Smurwaite, a wine-merchant, has been arrested for embezzling the funds of the Scarborough Bank, of which he was the actuary and secretary. He carried on a good business in the town. The total amount of his frauds is not yet ascertained. At present it is nearly 40007. Mr. Smurwaite has been gazetted as a bankrupt.

NARRATIVE OF ACCIDENT AND

DISASTER.

The fellow was then hissed from the Court. Henry Jackson, a money-taker in the service of the At Marylebone Police Office, on the 27th, Elizabeth Citizen Steamboat company, has committed Suicide. Higgins, wife of a wheelwright, was committed to Serious defalcations having occurred in the receipts of Newgate for trial, charged with Attempting to Murder the company, a number of the people employed were her Three Children, respectively of the ages of seven suspected. Among them was Jackson, who was ordered, years, five years, and seven months. Anne West, in on the 11th of January, to attend the solicitor to the passing along the Bloomfield Road on the 18th, saw the company. He left the place, saying he would presently accused on the towing-path of the Regent's Canal; she return, but was never seen alive again. On the 20th had the three children with her; she lowered the baby inst. his body was found floating in the Thames, at into the water, put another child in, and then walked Rotherhithe. A coroner's jury gave this verdict: in herself with the third child. West saw this through" That the deceased had destroyed himself while in a a paling; she raised an alarm, and two men came up. state of temporary insanity, arising from fear of a criOne of these, John Rollins, a painter, plunged into the minal prosecution." canal, and successively rescued all four. The mother was taken to the Paddington workhouse. To the inquiries of a police inspector there, she alleged her husband's cruelty and ill-usage as the cause of the act. She said: "He earns 27s. a week, and out of that he gives me the odd 78. to keep house and find everything: the JAMES WILSON, an engine-driver, and John Tinkler, 20s. he spends entirely upon himself. He comes home fireman, were Killed on the 2nd near the Darlington drunk, pulls me out of bed, and beats me, saying that station of the York, Newcastle, and Berwick Railway, he will be the death of me, and that it shall not be a by the bursting of a locomotive engine boiler. At the sudden but a lingering death. I have also been afraid inquest, Mr. George Barker of Roundhill, stated, that that he would poison me, and I thought that I and my whilst attending to his homestead, he was alarmed by a children might as well have died at once as not." The loud explosion, proceeding from a train on the railway, magistrate warmly applauded the conduct of Rollins and which runs close by his farm. Perceiving a great body Mrs. West for their exertions in this distressing case. of fire and steam proceed from the train, he ran to Two more Savings-Bank Defalcations have been dis-render assistance, and on gaining the line, found the covered, at St. Helen's, near Liverpool, and at Scarborough. The St. Helen's Bank was established about the year 1818; the management was vested in six trustees and fifty managers, who agreed to attend in rotation and affix their initials to the depositors' passbooks. Mr. John Johnson was appointed actuary, with a commission amounting to about 50l. a year; and, about 1833, he introduced his brother William as his deputy, calling him the sub-actuary. Mr. John Johnson was then, and is still, the managing partner in an extensive colliery firm. Recent events in connexion with

engine had burst. It was off the line, and the tender seemed to have been blown on to the opposite rails. Between the two lines lay a man apparently dead, and on looking round he found another in a ditch. Mr. Bell, the superintendent of the locomotive department, stated he was at the Darlington station when the train took its departure. It was a luggage train, consisting of 26 waggons, five loaded with timber, and the rest with coals. It was drawn by an old locomotive, one that had been damaged by a collision, but the boiler and its machinery were perfect in every respect, capable

foundered almost instantly after, her crew having barely time to clamber away from the wreck of the Floridian, which seemed in the same condition. Her hull was cut down to the water s edge, and it was not expected she could outlive the night. One of the Helen's crew perished in attempting to gain the Floridian. By incessant working at the pumps both crews managed to keep the vessel from sinking. Fortunately, on the morning of the 15th, her perilous situation was observed by the schooner Victoria, which bore down to her aid, and the master succeeded in taking off the wreck the crews of both vessels. The Floridian disappeared under water in the course of an hour after. Their loss and cargo is calculated at upwards of 17,000.

A Fire broke out on the 23rd, at Clay-hill Hall, near Enfield, the seat of Mr. Bosanquet, the banker, in a detached building, which was being prepared for a library. It was of an old-fashioned construction, the fronting covered with ivy. Some persons had been engaged during the day in airing the place, and about six o'clock in the evening smoke was seen issuing from the windows. An alarm was raised, and an attempt made to enter the building. The heat and smoke were too overpowering to allow them to proceed far into the interior, and in a very short time the flames had full possession of the building. Engines were promptly despatched, but were not able to save any portion of the place. The exact loss is not known, but it is stated that some very choice books were stored in the building. John Drury, a painter in Carey Street, was Killed by a Fall on the 25th. He lived with his wife in a garret. They had had a quarrel and a fight, which was put an end to by a fellow-lodger, and the wife went down stairs. Drury said he would not meet his wife again by descending the stairs, but would go down by the waterspout on the outside of the house, as he had often done before. He made the attempt, fell into the yard, and died on the spot.

On the 26th, an accident occurred at the mouth of the Devonport harbour, by which four persons were Drowned. The cutter of her Majesty's steam-ship Stromboli was proceeding from the vessel in Plymouth Sound to the harbour, when, between St. Nicholas Island and the main, the weather being boisterous, with a strong north-easterly wind, a large quantity of water was shipped at the lee-bow, and the cutter immediately sunk. The crew, consisting of 13 persons, were all immersed. The accident was seen from several quarters, and ten persons were rescued from their perilous position, but a midshipman and three of the cutter's crew were not recovered.

At the Wakefield station of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, a man was Killed on the 20th, by being crushed between the buffers of two waggons, while employed in getting some pigs off by a goods train to Halifax, where he resided. The cause of the accident was the backing of the engine without a warning signal. By the Trent, West Indian Steamer, which arrived on the 22nd, a number of persons were brought home, who had been Shipwrecked on the passage from New York to Liverpool. The following is the account given by one of them :-The liner ship L. Z. sailed from New York on the 12th of January, with 45 passengers. On the 14th, it was announced that from seven to fourteen feet of water was in the hold, entering from a leak. A pump was then attempted to be rigged by the carpenter, who was searching for his tools, until the water poured in so fast that his preparations were useless. The pas sengers were obliged to give up the pumps, being both choked and not in order. The vessel was given up for lost after midnight, when the crew got drunk, and began plundering and breaking trunks and chests, and looking for grog, and some selling and offering pieces of beef and pork for grog to the passengers. The captain, for the first time, crawled out of the cabin as if drunk, and ordered the cargo, or a part of it, to be thrown over. He remained a few minutes, when he went to his cabin again, and left the ship to the SOCIAL, SANITARY, AND MUNICIPAL management of a drunken crew and officers. The passengers and second mate employed themselves in putting overboard some flour barrels and cotton bales. On the morning of the 15th of January, the American barque Marieta appeared in sight, and took the passengers on board, but they were not allowed to take with them a single article of property, except the clothes they had on. This barque was bound for Havana, but steered for Bermuda, to land them there. When a few miles from the island, she struck upon a rock and was wrecked, but the crew and passengers were saved by boats from the island. The passengers who had sailed from New York in the liner, obtained a passage for England in the Trent, and arrived at Southampton, all of them in a state of such destitution, that they received support from the guardians of the poor. One of the passengers had perished when leaving the wreck of the liner, and another had become mad from terror and suffering.

An Explosive Fire took place on the 23rd, on the premises of Messrs. Heathfield and Burgess, chemists and naphtha distillers, Prince's Square, Finsbury. It was said to have been caused by some apparatus having been incautiously overheated to such an extent as to burst a boiler, the inflammable contents of which being scattered about, the building appeared in an instant to be enveloped in flames, which penetrated the roof, and spread through the adjacent yard. The building was in part destroyed, but, by the speedy arrival of engines, further damage was prevented. Three workmen, named Page, Talford, and Berry, who were on the spot when the explosion took place, were so severely burnt and injured, that they were conveyed in cabs to St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

On the 26th, a Fire broke out at the warehouses of Messrs. M'Culloch and Co., wholesale chemists and druggists, in Bishopsgate Street. The floors were well filled with drugs, but, fortunately, very little spirit or oil was in the building. A considerable amount of property was destroyed, but the adjoining buildings were preserved by the exertions of the firemen. The firm was insured.

PROGRESS.

A PUBLIC meeting called by the Aborigines Protection Society and the Peace Society was held at the London Tavern on the 30th of January, "to consider the fearful Sacrifice of Human Life on the Coast of Borneo in July last, and to petition parliament for the total and imme diate abolition of the practice of awarding head-money for the destruction of pirates." Between three and four hundred persons were present: Mr. Joseph Sturge presided; Sir Joshua Walmsley and Mr. George Thompson were among the leading occupants of the platform. A letter from Mr. Cobden expressed reprobation of the sanguinary attack on the Sarebas Dyaks, as a gratuitous and cold-blooded butchery, which brands its authors not only with cruelty but with cowardice." The chairman, as a commercial man, stated that his firm had paid hundreds of thousands of pounds for ship insurance, and he was not aware that they paid a shilling less for English vessels on the ground of their being protected by English men-of war: if the latter were all scuttled to-morrow, he believed he could go to Lloyd's next day and insure his vessels without a shilling more. He quoted a letter from China, to the effect that from 1845 to 1848 the writer never knew of an instance in which English vessels were attacked by pirates, "except such as were notoriously engaged in the illegal opium traffic." A seafaring man, who gave the name of "Captain Aaron Smith," here declared from the body of the meeting, that he could prove such attacks He was invited to the platform, and took a place there. He then rose and said, that he had been attacked by pirates in the China seas, at midnight, by a fleet of prahus-no mere "baskets," but boats manned by a hundred men each, and rowed by seventy or eighty oars. He had navigated those seas thirty years, and the pirates had cost him many a sleepless night. Bound from Sourabaya to China on the 30th of April, 1836, he had been set upon by twenty of these pirates. "We had a three hours' engagement, and during that time I can tell you I killed as many men in proportion as Rajah Brooke. I only did my duty, for it was my duty to defend my ship. After a