At Stafford, on Tuesday, before Mr. Justice Henn Coffins, Henry
Pugh, accused of murder, of manslaughter, and of the .attempt to commit suicide, was acquitted of all three offences under rather remarkable circumstances. On May 26th, Ann Maria Gill was found drowned, and Pugh, according to his -own account, had held her down in a pond, into which they both went to drown themselves, under the influence of drink. His words were :—" We went straight into the water, I up to -my neck. She got hold of me and held me under the water till I was nearly done for. We had a good struggle. I got the best of her ; I held her ; she was drowned. I got out. I went straight home." Now, the law is, that if two people agree to commit suicide, and only one dies, the other is guilty of murder. And so Mr. Justice Henn Collins laid it down ; but he added that if the man was too drunk to intend suicide, and only went into the water in his drunkenness without any distinct intention at all, and the drunken struggle ended in -death, then it would not amount to murder; and he asked the jury whether they held that the prisoner, in his effort to save himself, had thrust the deceised away with greater violence than was necessary to save himself,—in which case it would be manslaughter, and not murder. The jury apparently found that the prisoner did not even use greater violence than was necessary to save his own life, and acquitted him altogether,—which seems hardly consistent with his own evi-
dence : "I got the best of her ; I held her ; she was drowned." It is not very likely to make people dread the consequences of such di inking-bouts as these, that a man should come off scot- free from such a tragedy.
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