IRELAND.
From proceedings initiated before Mr. Justice Keogh, it appears that Mr. Vincent Scully M.P. now seeks to repudiate all responsibility as a share- holder in the Tipperary Bank, on the ground that he had legally trans- ferred his shares long before the bank stopped, and that but for the stoppage the list of shareholders returned to the Stamp Office in March 1856 would have shown that he was not a shareholder. Mr. Justice Keogh permitted these-pleas to be put on a record in an action.
The report which we noted in our Postscript last week of the suicide of Mr. George Little, Cashier of the Great Western Railway, was inaccurate, though the general belief at first was that the unfortunate gentleman had destroyed himself, _from fear of an exposure of misapplication of funds in- trusted to him : Mr. Little did not misapply any funds, and it is clear that he was assassinated. On the morning of the 14th, Mr. Little had not ar- rived at his office at the usual hour ; nothing had been heard of him since the preceding afternoon; his office was locked. At noon, it was deemed ad- visable to break open the office—the cold corpse of Mr. Little was disco- vered stretched on the floor. The body was lying on the face ; the throat was cut from ear to ear ; and on a surgical examination it was found that the head was covered with wounds, and the skull was fractured in many places—crushed to fragments. No instrument was found in the office by which the wounds could have been inflicted ; neither was the key of the door to be found. In the office there was no lees than 15001. in cash ; and, it was at first believed, the murderer did not carry off any property. A towel was marked with blood, and cut, as if the murderer d wiped a sharp instrument upon it. Mr. Little was forty years of age, and unmar- ried; he was highly respected, very mild in his manners, and no person was known to have ill-will towards him. His accounts were perfectly correct. - A number of circumstances elicited at the Coroner's inquest, or which have come to light in other ways, show this to be one of themost mysterious and extraordinary murders ever perpetrated. Mr. Little's room at the Broadstone terminus on one side looked upon the platforms of the railway, where, probably, all was bustle in despatching. the mail-train, or receiving the last up-train, at the time the unfortunate gentleman was butchered.. , A short time since, Mr. Little bad been startled in the evening by a labouring man saddenly entering his room when he was alone, surrounded by piles of money : the man said, he wanted the engineer. After that, Mr. Little locked the door when alone in the evening,- and only opened it when he heard some known voice. The door is stated to have been thus fastened on the evening of the murder. , How did the assassin gain admittance ? He could not have been secreted in the room, for there was no place of conceal- ment. If the door really was locked, Mr. Little must have admitted him, and then-resumed his seat, at the table—for it is evident that he was struck down while seated at the table. If Mr. Little admitted hini, the assassin, musthave been some one known to him. The police, however, believe that he must have entered while the door was unfastened. What was the motive for the crime ?—money ? When Mr. Little's room was entered on Friday, 15001. was found arranged on the tables in piles of notes, gold, and silver ; and no portion of it bad been disturbed. How did the assassin escape ? He must have been in the roomlate in the evening ; for footsteps were .heard by a servant wbo was in a IA= below—she says Mr. Little's footsteps, but it is very possible that they were the murderer's. At any rate the assassin re- mained late ; he would then have found great difficulty in getting out of the hew- Witnesses at the inquest stated that a door leading to the platform had been unthatened during.the night, and it is surmised that he escaped by this door. But the police have since found marks of blood on a door, and marks on dust which had settled on a window-ledge, showing that the mur- derer got on to the platform by passing through a window. , But by' what- ever means he gained the platform, it is extraordinary that the watchnian stationed there saw nothing of him. Both the fact of the murderer's gain- ing admission to the house unobserved and the method of his escape show thathe must have been well acquainted with the premises. That Mr. Little often had large sums in his office was well known among the railway peo-.. ple. Mr. Little's clerk states that on the Thursday a Jew pedlar came into the office, and wanted to sell spectacles to Mr. Little:' he was very per- sistent, and staid some time : there was much money lying about.
The Coroner's Jury returned a verdict of " Wilful murder against some
Person or persons unknown ." • • - • • ,..The latest accounts intimate that money has been carried off from Mr. !-atrie's room—some 3601., and that taken from a safe while 15001. was ly- ing on the table. A portion of a canal near the station has been drained, and
an engineer's hammer has been found in the mud, the handle cracked as if a blow had been hit which the head had missed : there was human hair at- tached to the hammer. The Railway Company have offered a reward of 2001., and the family of the deceased 1501., for the conviction of the mur- derer. Every agency is at work to discover him. A belief is gaining ground that the assassin was a person in the employ of the Company.
Ireland furnishes an appalling railway " accident" this week. The line from Waterford to Kilkenny is single ; two miles from Waterford, at Dun- kitt, there is a siding ; On Wednesday about two o'clock, a ballast-train, containing workmen, should have been turned into the siding, but it was allowed to proceed on the main line; presently a passenger-train for Dublin dashed up. The men in the ballast-train saw their danger, leaped from the waggons, and tried to run up the sides of a deep cutting—five fell back on the rails, and were torn to pieces by the passenger-train. The scene was horrible. Of course the two trains came into collision ; and a number of passengers were badly hurt—Dr. White of Dublin, Inspector of Lunatic Asylums, is not expected to survive. Mr. Sims Reeves and a musical troupe would have travelled by this train had not Mr. Reeves been unwell.
The decease of Mr. James Pim of Dublin is noted : he was the projector of the Dublin and Kingstown Railway, the first line constructed in Ireland, and the second in the United Kingdom.
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