20 MAY 1837, Page 6

In what is called the administration of justice, very brutal

things are alone sometimes. An inquest was held in Newgate prison on Thursday, on the corpse of a young woman, who had been committed on a charge of being an accomplice in embezzling some property with a man who had been convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. There does not seem to have been any difficulty in ascertaining her place of r esidence, cie any fear that she would decamp. But she was arrested while in bed, at three o'clock in the morning, by a party of three Policemen. She was taken before Mr. Laing, of Hatton Garden, excessively ill, so weak that she could neither stand nor speak. Laing chose to assume that she feigned illness, and said "she was easily frightened ;" and committed her to Newgate when she ought to have been sent to a hos- pitaL In a few days after she was taken to prison, she died. The Coroner said, that "Mr. Laing might have acted veiy differently." We think so too ; and it is symptomatic of some slight compunction ow the part of that person himself, that when the Governor of New- gate attended at Hatton Garden to state the circumstaimes of the girl's death, be ordered the office to be cleared. Jt should be remembered, that even if the deceased were guilty, she was but an accomplice in a sine for which the principal was only sentenced to six months' impri- sonment. As it turned out, her actual punishment was death.