A remarkable murder has occurred in Finsbury. Jacob Spinass, night
porter at Bueker's Hotel, Christopher Street, had been drinking hard on Friday se'nnight, when about half-past five in the morning Mrs. Bueker beard a terrible noise in his room, and on descending to inquire the cause met him apparently wild,
shouting, "The devil is downstairs!" On entering the room the body of a woman, Cecilia Aldridge, an " unfortunate," was found by the bed, with the head beaten in by wine-bottles. It is believed that both bad been drinking, and that Spinass had either quarrelled with the woman, or in a fit of delirium from drink had mistaken her for the devil, and murdered her. He himself at first asserted that several men had broken into the room, the devil being among them, and that he had beaten him out ; but he sub- sequently firmly protested his innocence, and, according to the Times, " made a statement, which was reconcilable in its more important features with the evidence." Should he be innocent, as suggested, the case would be a cause cilebre in the annals of circumstantial evidence ; but his " statement," as reported on Friday night, is a mere assertion that he mistook the woman for a thief.
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