A new version is given of the story of the
idiot killed by some officers in a " lark." It is now said, that a party of gentlemen who passed their time on a visit to a gentleman of splendid hospitality in Philips. town in wanton and silly acts, made one of the under-servants of their host " beastly drunk " ; and while in that state he fell against a grate, and so burnt his head as to die from the injury. The Ministerial Evening Packet thus mentions the affair, making light of it " An inquest was held so far back as the 19th ultimo, by the Coroner of this district and a respectable Jury numbering twenty-one bonos et legates homines, on the body of a person named Flanagan, who died on the preceding day, in consequence of extensive injuries by fire received on the 11th of the said month, in two houses of William Megan, Esq., near Philipstown. After examining several witnesses, and among them the brother and sister of the deceased, with two medical gentlemen of Philipstown Dispensary, who attended Flanagan during his illness, the Jury unanimously returned a verdict of "Accidental Death."
A knife, covered with blood, was discovered in the lane near Pembroke Road, where the boy Maguire was lately murdered. Inspector Durham brought it to Kilmainham, where witnesses who will be produced at the trial are in safe keeping, for the purpose of having it identified. He showed it to Mrs. Delahunt, the sister-in-law of the prisoner : the moment she beheld it she fainted, and on recovering she acknowledged that it was her property. A woman who resides next door to Mrs. Delahunt has also identified the knife as one which she saw Delahunt sharpening shortly before the murder was committed : she had borrowed it occasionally from Mrs. Delahunt, and was therefore enabled to identify it.
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