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A special meeting of the Court of Common Council was held on Tuesday. The report of the Thames Navigation Committee was read, and its adoption was moved. Mr. David Wire moved that it be referred back to the Committee for further inquiry, before any permission be given to form an embankment of the river. After some discussion, the original motion was carried unanimously.
Mr. P. A. Taylor then moved a resolution, regretting that notwith- standing the benevolent desire expressed by the Queen in the Speech at the opening of Parliament, the House of Commons had refused to sanction the free importation of corn, and that Ministers had introduced a law to readjust, instead of remove, the restrictions upon the purchase of food. Mr. Taylor supported his motion in a long speech, which was praised by both supporters and opponents. Mr. Heppel seconded the motion. Mr. Gadsden recommended the tradesmen who compose the Court to stick to that for which they were sent there, the municipal affairs of the Corporation but he did not move any amendment. On a division, the motion was carried, by 60 to 34.
The Income-tax has been petitioned against by the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. The ropemakers have been holding meetings at Crosby Hall, to resolve against the alterations in the Tariff of the du- ties on hemp and cordage ; which, they say, will enable Russia to drive them out of the trade. Deputies from all parts of the United Kingdom have met in London to resist the changes which affect the cork-trade.
A murder has come to light at a villa on Putney Heath, which rivals the Greenacre murder in circumstances of atrocity. The mode of the discovery was singular. At Roehampton is Granard Lodge, the residence of Mr. Quelaz Shiell, an East Indian merchant. Mr. Shiell's coachman, Daniel Good, a middle-aged Irishman, called in a chaise, at eight o'clock on Wed- nesday evening, at the shop of Mr. Collingbourn, a pawnbroker in Wands- worth, and bought a pair of black knee-breeches, which he took on credit. The shop-boy saw him at the same time put a pair of trousers under his coat-skirt, and place them with the breeches in the chaise. Mr. Collingbourn followed him out, and charged him with the theft; but he denied it, and hurriedly drove off. The pawnbroker sent a Policeman, William Gardner, after the thief; and with the officer went the shop- boy, and Robert Speed, a neighbour. Good lived at the stables about a quarter of a mile from Mr. Shiell's house ; and when the boy rang the bell—Gardner keeping in the background—Good himself came to the door. Gardner then approached, and told him that he was to arrest him for stealing a pair of black trousers. Good coolly replied, that he brought away some black breeches, and he offered to pay for them ; but the Policeman stuck to his instruc- tions, and insisted on searching the chaise. Good offered no objection ; and the chaise, the coach-house, and one of the stables, were searched, to no purpose. Gardner then approached another stable ; when Good at once put his back to the door and refused to let him enter. Their altercation drew to the spot Mr. Oughton, Mr. Shiell's bailiff; who in- sisted that Gardner should search the stable ; and they all entered. Speed and the shop-boy stood near Good, while Gardner searched. When he came to some corn-bins, the coachman exhibited great un- easiness, and urgently desired to go to Wandsworth to settle the matter with Mr. Collingbourn. Gardner then went to a stall which seemed to be filled with trusses of bay: he removed two trusses, and in some hay beneath, he discovered what he supposed to be a dead goose. He ex- claimed, " My God what's this ? " and at the same moment, before he could be prevented, Good rushed from the stable, shut the door after him, and locked it. The party tried to burst it open, but could not ; and then they returned to examine what Gardner had found in the hay. It proved to be the trunk of a woman's body, shorn of its head and limbs, and ripped open in front, with the internal parts removed. Re- newed and successful efforts were made to open the stable-door ; and the shop-boy was sent to the Police on duty in the neighbourhood, to raise a hue and cry and fetch the Divisional Surgeon of Police. The fugitive was tracked by his footsteps half-way across a field towards Putney ; but he had escaped.
The surgeon's assistant came and examined the body ; the flesh of which had been carefully separated with a sharp instrument, while the bones had been broken or sawed through. The surgeon thought that the female had been about four or five and twenty ; and that the had never been a mother. While the party were engaged in this examina- tion, their attention was drawn to an overpowering stench which pro- ceeded from a harness-room. They entered ; and in the fire-place they found a pile of wood, amid which were wood ashes, and the burnt re- mains of human hones from the head and limbs. A large axe was afterwards found in the room, and a saw, both covered with blood.
Good had been seen on the previous Thursday evening, with a young woman, at a public-house in Roehampton. It is said that they seemed to be "courting." He tried to take a wedding-ring off the woman's finger ; but she told him that he should not have it except with her life. He reproached her with having lost a brooch that he had given her. But they left the place in a friendly mood. In Good's house was found a little boy, his son, who had been brought home on Monday evening ; having lived for two years with a woman whom Good called his sister, at No. 18 in Manchester Square. It has been found that Good went to that house; and he left it on Thursday evening, in a cab—telling the man to drive as fast as possible to the Birmingham Railway. He was so ghastly pale, that the cabman asked him if he was ill ; and Good replied that he had been out all night drinking with some friends. An inquest on the remains of the body discovered in the stable was opened yesterday, before Mr. Carter, and adjourned till Tuesday.
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