Mrs. Hannah Newington (alias Flora Davy) was found guilty of
the manslaughter of Mr. F. Moon on the same day as that on which Mr. Pook was acquitted, and sentenced by Baron Chaunell
• to eight years' penal servitude, a sentence which took the prisoner • so much by surprise that she fainted on hearing it. Mr. Baron Chan- nell seems to have thought that there were circumstances bringing the act almost within the definition of murder, and that the in- dictment might have been for murder as well as manslaughter. Apparently he attached weight to the evidence of Capt. Elliot that -the deceased had said of the accused, in relation to some previous attempt of the kind, "It is not your fault that you have not done it already, Flo, for you have tried to do it." It was this evidence, no doubt, which made the sentence so heavy, and not,—at least, .we hope not, —the dismay so frankly expressed by the Times of Monday that "a gentleman of good fortune" should have been -" stabbed to the heart with a poultry-knife in a drawing-room, by .ft woman who had just dined with him after a ride in the park,"
terrible finale, indeed, for soft living; but one does not see why it is so specially horrible to put an end to a life that has been lived softly, and has known all the ways of pleasantness though not the paths of pesos; surely it is still more horrible to put an end to one that has been lived hardly, and has known as little of the one as of the other.
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