4ht. Vronium
Government has officially notified to the local authorities at Portsmouth, that the construction of commercial docks on Government property will not be permitted.
At a meeting of the Town-Council of Windsor, on Tuesday, thanks were voted by acclamation to the Queen and Prince Albert, for "the spontaneous and munificent present of their portraits wherewith to deco- rate the Town-hall."
The Militia. are now in training in various counties ; and favourable accounts are published of the punctuality of the men in answering to the muster-roll, and of their progress in soldierly exercises.
An earthquake was distinctly felt at different points of the North-west- ern counties before daybreak on Tuesday morning. The weather had been wet and sultry for some days. On both banks of the Mersey, espe- cially in the suburbs of Liverpool, persons were awakened out of their sleep by the rocking of their beds like a cradle. One says that " the bed shook so I' grasped it, quite startled" ; and he heard a "subdued rum- bling," Another was roused by " a loud noise and a tremulous motion of the house." A third " heard five or six vibrations " of sound, gra- dually decreasing. To a fourth it seemed as if a " very heavy person were walking across the room-floor." "The wooden rings" on the bed of a fifth "rattled as if some one had violently pushed them." Captain Grieg, head constable, woke up thinking. burglars were in the house. The earthquake was heard and felt by the police-officers on duty. The shock was distinct at Chester, and along the Birkenhead and Chester line ; at Holy- head; Bangor, Conway, and Congleton, " accompanied by aloud noise." At Manchester, and various towns lying-round Manchester, it was most distinctly felt : "something hire the vibration felt in a badly-built house when a heavily-laden carriage rattles past " ; crockery rattled ; a young lady saw her dressing-table 'vibrate ; several -persons spoke off-a "aeon.
tion of sickness" ; "dogs trembled and were much frightened." Nearly all the accounts agree in specifying half-past four as the time, and in de- scribing the motion as a "lateral vibratory one." [Accounts from Ireland state that the vibrations of the earth, accom- panied by "a noise, had been felt nearly at the same time in and around Dublin, and in the Wicklow Mountains.] The number of emigrants who left Liverpool during the month of Oc- tober was 17,243 ; being 6037 less than the number in the previous month, and 3075 less than in the corresponding month of last year. The numbers from the Government depOt at Birkenhead, bound for Australia, were-242 by the Priscilla, 235 by the Arabian, and 336 by the Thames: ' About two years and a half ago, Sarah Lister, wife of a labourer at North Ockendon in Essex, died, and was buried. She had seven children by a former husband ; since her death, one of these, a girl of eighteen, has lived on familiar terms with Lister. They quarrelled, and the girl exclaimed, • ' You are not going to poison me as you did my mother ! " This got abroad ; and the upshot has been that the woman's body has been exhumed, a Coro- ner's Jury summoned, and the viscera taken out in their presence. Dr. Taylor is now analyzing them for the discovery of poison.
Mr. Mark Marks, a Liverpool bullion-agent, and Henry Fairburn, an emigration-agent, have been committed for trial by the Liverpool Stipendiary Magistrate, on a charge of conspiring to defraud Mr. Robert Gardner, a per- son from Leicestershire, of nearly 1001. Mr. Gardner was about to emigrate to America ; he purchased goods of Fairborn, and on his advice resolved to change his English money for a draft on a New York bank. Fairborn in- troduced him to Marks. Marks gave Mr. Gardner an order for 1025 dollars in exchange for 3051.,—taking advantage, it is alleged, of the emigrant's ignorance of the value of American money. After embarking, Mr. Gardner discovered that he had been victimized, and he came on shore again. When arrested, Mr. Marks admitted that there was an " error " of 451. in the draft.
An inquiry has been held by the Birkenhead Magistrates into a com- plaint of cruel treatment made by a young girl against her master and mis- tress. Elizabeth Malcolm had been apprenticed as a servant, by the Liver- pool Female Orphan Asylum, to Mr. John Pemberton, a young married gentleman who is studying for the bar. The girl states that during a period of two years both. Mr. and Mrs. Pemberton behaved to her with great cruelty : she was beaten with a doubled rope, a policeman's staff, and a poker, and she had been locked up for hours in a cellar. This treatment was ad- ministered as punishment for trivial faults. A long cross-examination only -elicited that the girl had been sulky, and had refused to obey orders : but her evidence as to the ill-treatment was not impugned. Another servant corrobo- rated the girl's story : two witnesses had heard her screams. The Secretary to the Orphan Asylum gave her an excellent character for good conduct while she was in the institution. The Magistrates committed both the ac- cused for Wet Three men have been killed on the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire Railway, near Sheffield, by a fall of earth. A large engine-shed was to be constructed on the side of. the railway, at the foot of an embankment. A -deep excavation had been made beneath the embankment for the foundation of the walls; the soil was very loose, and the sides of the trench were sup- ported by timber and planks. A piece of timber slipped from the workmen's hands, struck a support, and caused some of the planks to give way. Fresh supports were introduced, but these proved insufficient ; and while four men were in the trench, about four o'clock on Friday afternoon, the earth began to fall in. One man escaped, but the others were overwhelmed by an im- mense mass of soil and timber. It was impossible to attempt the recovery of the bodies for some hours, as disturbing the debris would only have brought -down fresh masses of the railway embankment. As soon as the eager work- men could attempt the task with any prospect of success, though even then -at the risk of their own lives, they began to sink a shaft in the direction where the men were buried; and after a time they were surprised to hear voices beneath: two of the men were actually got out alive, though only speedily to die in the upper air; the third had been killed on the instant by a stone breaking his neck. Peasnall, a carpenter, was uncovered after he had been buried for twenty-four hours : timbers had fallen so as to protect his head and shoulders ; he could speak when taken out, but • before any medical aid could be rendered a fatal collapse occurred. Kemp, a navigator, was in the earth for nearly doable the time : his head was boxed in with timbers Ma most extraordinary way, but was-not crushed. Hours before he was . liberated, the workmen were enabled to administerto him brandy and beef-tea. Before any of the timber which hemmed him in could be removed, it was necessary to substitute other timbers to 'aet as, a roof, and the operators worked in perpetual danger of their own lives. At four in the afternoon of Saturday the task appeared on the eve of completion, but it turned out that -the ground required further excavation. At half-past ten at night a scarf- was tied round the poor fellow's waist in order to hoist him up ; when it was- discovered thatone of his legs was fast. The workmen were shocked at find- ing that while making the second excavation, and throwing the earth into the pit dug for the extrication of Peasnall, they had been burying one of Kemp's legs. They had now to work hard till half-pest two next morning in order to undo the mistake; when it appeared that the other leg was bound firmly among some huge balks of timber. The moat tedious task of all had yet to be performed : the timber had to be cut away by morsels at a time ; and it was seven o'clock before the sufferer was drawn from his strange pri- son-house. He had then been in the earth about forty hours : his tall bulky frame compressed into a space little more than three feet in length. A warm bath and other stimulants were instantly applied ; but, owing- to excessive injury at the lower extremity of the spine, and general exhaustion, he died at half-past two o'clock on Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Edward Hamnett, an aged gentleman, a spirit-merchant of Liver- pool, and one of his nieces, Miss Mary Hamnett, were killed at the Seaforth station, on the Liverpool and Crosby Ra. way, on Sunday night. Mr. Ham- nett usually visited his three nieces at Seaforth on Sundays; last Sunday he did so ; and one of the nieces accompanied him to the railway station on his return. He seems to have got on to the platform as a train'was moving for- ward. He opened a carriage-door ; his niece expostulated, and-he shut the door; but directly afterwards he opened another. The moving train pulled him off his feet; Miss Hamnett clung to his Goat ; and in an instant both were drawn between the carriages and the platform • and thbugh the train was quickly stopped, both uncle and niece were crushed to death.
The goods-warehouses of- the York and North Midland Bellamy Company at Hull have suffered from a fire which consumed a large building and its valuable contents. Five men who were employed upon a- fire-engine- fell into =adjacent dock; four were got out alive; but the fifth perished.
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