3littruputi5.
The Lord Mayor gave a grand banquet at the Man.sionhouse, on Thurs- day, to the Corporation of Hastings and Rye, and a party of immediate friends. Lord Edward Howard, the Honourable George Waldegrave, the Honourable Henry Fitzroy, M.P., Mr. Masterman, M.P., Mr. Spencer Walpole, M.P., and some half-dozen more Members of Parlia- mient, were among the guests.
In the Exchequer Chamber, on Tuesday, judgment was given on the Braintree church-rate case, Joslin versus Veley and others. The Court was divided in opinion. Baron Platt, Justice Cresswell, Justice Maule, and _Baron Alderson, tanned the doctrine that the repair of the church fabric is a duty which the parishioners are compellable to perform, and that the mi- nority can make a rate if the majority refuses to make one; Baron Rolfe, Baron Parke, and Chief Justice Wilde, dissented from the doctrine that the minority can bind the majority. The judgment of the majority of the Bench was, that the judgment of the Court below (the Queen's Bench) must be af- firmed. So the monition of the Ecclesiastical Court to make a rate is now of operative force.
In the Consistory Court, on Saturday, Dr. Lushington decided for the l)utchess of Buckingham in a suit for a divorce preferred against her husband on the ground of adultery. On the part of the Duke, Dr. Addams offered .no opposition ; and the Judge considered that a sound discretion had been iobeerved in this step.
At the Middlesex Sessions, on Wednesday, John Thomas Simpson Jones, a respectably-dressed man, was tried for fraudulently obtaining the two halves of a five-pound note and the sum of 31. from a gentleman ; the first ' by writing as a relative, and the other money on pretence of applying it to the relief of a sick man. Jones is a notorious and successful begging-letter impostor. One of the witnesses against him was a confederate who had been convicted, and who was brought from prison to give his evidence. Jones wrote a number of letters in London, dated them Gravesend, signed them as coming from a doctor of medicine, and made out a pitiful story about his Allow rogue's being consumptive and poor : these letters were posted at 'Gravesend; some answers were returned, and the knaves got 81. on one day. tf3ometimes Jones appeared dressed as a clergyman. He fleeced many per- ;eons in high life, including the Late Queen Dowager. He was found guilty; \but a legal point as to the proper venue of the indictment was reserved for the decision of the Judges.
On Thursday; Jones and Jane Farr were charged with obtaining 30/. from is gentleman named Wood, by a fraudulent pretence. The woman wrote to Mr. Wood as a "Mrs. Wood," the widow of a person he had formerly known; 'represented that she was an author, with a small annuity, engaged in com- pleting a religious book, and was hard pressed for a little money-' and she ;solicited a loan : to support her story false documents were enclosed. The aetter was a most artful production ; and Mr. Wood returned a check for 301. The indictment was not pressed, since Farr was considered as an instrument !in Jones's hand, and since she is at present undergoing imprisonment at Bath on a conviction for imposture. This gang of begging-letter-writers seem to -have been exceedingly clever and successful.
At Worship Street Police Office, on three occasions, Margaret Higgins and -Elizabeth Smith have been examined on a charge of robbing Mr. Frederick -Hardy Jewett, a solicitor, after haring stupified him with chloroform. On Monday week, Mr. Jewett was too ill to appear; on the following Friday he had sulficiently recovered to give evidence. He stated, that between nine and ten o'clock on the evening of the 10th instant, he was proceeding slowly -along the Whitechapel Road, with the intention of taking the first omnibus for his private residence, at West Ham ; all at once, he felt somebody, he believed a woman touch his left side, and at the same moment felt a rag or _handkerchief preslad over the lower part of the face. He became insensible, and was conscious of nothing that occurred to him until about daylight on the following morning ; when he slowly revived, and, on recovering suffi- ciently, found himself lying upon a very dirty bed in a wretched apartment, -and in a complete state of nudity, with the exception of an old piece of rag which had been carelessly thrown over him. Some of his clothes were in the room ; other articles had been stolen, with his watch, jewellery, and ,money. His trousers were muddy, as if he had been dragged through the ,streets. The door of the room was fastened by a padlock outside ; Mr. Jewett 'found the key on the floor; he pushed it under the door to a potman who quippened to be in the house and was thus liberated. He found that he had (been conveyed to a low lodging-house in Thrall Street, Spitalfields. The .prosecutor said he was still unwell from the drug, and he had suffered greatly.
On Thursday last, Mr. Jewett did not attend ; and his father informed the ;Magistrate that a most alarming relapse confined him to his bed, and he had ',been delirious. Policemen and other witnesses gave evidence. The women -rented the room ; when arrested they amused each other. Higgins had been /heard to say that she had " done ' the robbery. She told a woman that a .man named Gallagher, with whom she cohabited, had undergone an opera- tion at the London Hospital, where they had given him some stuff to send him to sleep, and that he had contrived to bring some of it away with him. 'The prisoners were remanded.
Benoit Tournaire, a French equestrian, having opened a "Royal French -'in Ratcliff Highway, Mr. Thorne,. the lessee of the Pavilion Theatre, '• ed in closing it under the provisions of the Metropolitan Building as alleged before the Thames Police Magistrate, that the circus, of public amuaement, had not been erected under that special of the official referees required by the act ; whereby a penalty of 411trre, n incurred. There seems to have been no real answer to the
1.) • , the Magistrate took tune to consider, M. Tournaire promising to close the place in the mean time. He did so. Mr. Yardley gave his decision on Monday, that the case had been made out • bat as the object was only to close the circus, he inflicted a mitigated penalty of 20/., which he would further reduce to 20s. if the costs were paid.
While the workmen were employed on the model lodging-house in George Street, Bloonuiburv, on Thursday evening, an arch is the fourth story fell hi, causing the fall of more of the building, and burying three men in the ruins. They were all badly hurt, and of one there is no hope of the recovery.
-The Temple Church was in some danger from fire on Sunday morning. The man who had charge of the furnace for heating water to warm the church, having lighted the fire, left it. Some time afterwards, he heard a loud noise, and on entering the :furnace-room found it in flames. He threw several pads of water on the fire, and such fumes arose that he fell senseless. He was discovered by other pepsin and dragged-out; the enH, ses were sent for, and eventually the fire was extinguished, after burning the place where it originated and the choristers' room which was above it. The church itself was untouched. The furnace-man had been in the habit of piling bundles of wood on the boiler to dry them, and on Sunday morning the heat set them on fire.
According to a report by Mr. Braidwood, the Superintendent of the Fire Brigade there were 838 fires in London during the last year • 256 of which were productive of much damage, the others were slight. 'There were 11 fatal fires, with a loss of 20 lives. In 1848, the total of fires was 805.
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