THE LANCASHIRE ATROCITIES.
[TO THIS EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Stn,—As one who has been called upon in the course of his daily work to give attention to the Kicking Murders of the North of England, allow me to say that the weapon in use is very much more formidable than you describe it. The boot of the ironwork puddler, that may be seen hung up in numbers at every shoe- maker's door in iron and coal districts, is covered over the whole sole with large iron nails, the heads shaped like the roof of a house, and raising the actual sole about half an inch from the ground. Sometimes, in substitution of nails, near the tips there is an iron plate,bending around over the front edge of the sole. Each of the boots must weigh several pounds, for it fatigues a man's arm to hold it up. These boots are worn by most of the unskilled and partially skilled labourers of the district, as well as by the puddlers ; and the tremendous killing force that may be given to them can only be appreciated by remembering that the boot is firmly laced over the ancle, and in murderous action the lower leg is swung out freely from the knee. Take a half-stone weight by the ring, and then swing the arm freely from the shoulder, and some notion may be formed of the impetus the foot covered with a puddler's boot may receive ; but the boot is the more formidable weapon, because of the close fit, and the suppleness in directing the blow given by the ancle-joint.
So far as my observation goes, the men are hardly cunning enough to strike behind the ear. In the case of the Spenny- moor murder, the man was killed in twenty minutes, at his own door, by kicks in the lower part of the abdomen,--a very much more agonising death than by a kick on the head. In a Durham county murder, a few months after that last mentioned, the mur- derer danced on the breast and abdomen of the victim, who also died in twenty minutes.
There are other murders besides kicking murders in these parts. Within a few hundred yards of the site of the Spennymoor murder, and within a year or two preceding that event, an " un- fortunate from Durham was dragged by her legs up and down a field, in the presence of a score or more of men, and next morning her dead, nude body was found a few yards off, and her clothes a hundred yards further. Nobody suffered in life or liberty for the crime. Shortly after the Spennymoor murder, that is to say, about eighteen or twenty months ago, a man was knocked down dead with a life-preserver at seven o'clock on a Saturday evening, on the footway of a street close to the market-place of Middles- borough, and when the crowd was so dense that a ball pitched into the air could not have fallen to the ground without striking some one. Yet no one was committed for trial for the murder.
It is noteworthy that with the change at the Home Office from Mr. Secretary Bruce to Mr. Secretary Lowe our Durham murders ceased. There is again, under Mr. Secretary Cross, a perceptible increase in tendency towards murderous violence ; but our Durham Roughs have had a " scare "; and besides, Jeshurun is not so fat as a year or two ago, when trade was flourishing, and we may, therefore, hope to rest for a while in a moderate security of life, especially as the Judges are dispensing the " cat" with some liberality to the footpads who add violence to robbery.—
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