Hannah Dobbs has been acquitted of the murder of Miss
Hacker in Easton Square, and Katharine Webster found guilty of the murder of Mrs. Thomas hi Richmond, and in both cases the verdict has been accepted as either reasonable or just. Whoever was guilty of the Easton Square murder, the evidence against the servant Hannah Dobbs was insufficient to convict her of anything except the illegal possession of the murdered woman's trinkets. She might have obtained. possession of them in a dozen ways—by gift, for instance, or theft after death—without being the murderess, while there was a possibility, a very remote one, that the deceased woman killed herself. Of direct evidence to connect Hannah Dobbs with murder there was none. In the second case a murder had certainly been committed, and as Webster was the servant in the house, had stolen her mistress's dresses, per- sonated her after death, and sold her furniture, there was every reason to believe her guilty. She might, it is true, only have been an accomplice, and she herself sot up this theory against two men; but in spite of their own badly stated evidence, this was disproved by a conclusive alibi. The jury therefore found a verdict of murder, and the wretched woman, on being called on for her defence, exonerated her suspected accomplices, declared her statements about them false, and admitted the murder, though alleging that she had been instigated to commit it. She was condemned to death, and will undoubtedly be executed, the crime having been committed with premeditation, and with singular callousness and cruelty.
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