At the Exeter Assizes, Mr. Baron Martin delivered sentence on
Robert Bird and Sarah Bird, for the misdemeanour of which eight out of fourteen Judges believe them to have been legally convicted on the second trial for cruelty to Mary Ann Parsons. Baron Martin was one of the minority who held that the conviction was bad ; but he bowed to the decision of the majority,:as if the case had gone to the House of Lords. However, as the ease of the pri- soners bad never been heard, he offered to give them time to make affidavits. It was ultimately arranged that sentence should be passed immediately, and the prisoners left to state their case to the Secretary of State. They were sentenced to be imprisoned with hard labour for sixteen calendar months ; which will be two years from the beginning of their present incarceration.
Maria Clarke, of Wingfield, Suffolk, is charged with the murder of her child. On Tuesday last she left Fulham Workhouse, to be married to a labourer. She had an infant, and feared that her betrothed would reject her if he found that out. She confesses the result—" I took up the spade, went into the meadow, dug a hole, and laid my child in. I then covered the child over with earth, and to stifle its screams I stamped upon the sod. When the child was covered up with the earth, I heard it cry. I then sat down upon the place where I had buried it, and in a short time after I went home." She was remanded till Monday.
Another boiler explosion—and seven lives lost ! The scene of the diges- ter, which occurred on Wednesday, was the Lilly-bank flax-mill, about three miles from Paisley, and within five miles of the fatal Nitshill colliery. The boiler is said to have been of the best construction in all respects, and, the accident inexplicable.
Upwards of twenty corpses of the miners killed in the Nitahill colliery had. been recovered on Wednesday—all horribly mangled and burned.
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