Vriniurro.
Lord Dungarvan has, much to the astonishment of the electors of West Somersetshire, retired from the position of candidate for the honour of representing the county on the Conservative principles of the late Sir Alexander Hood. His grandfather, the Earl of Cork, is a Whig, and " the noble Viscount felt that he might think it unkind," states Mr. P. Popham at a public meeting on the subject, "if he proposed in the Lower House a set of resolutions different from those which his grandfather would support in the Upper House." It is intended to apply to Mr. W. Gore Langton.
The reelections rendered necessary by the legal promotions are likely to be " of course." The Plymouth correspondent of the Times wrote yes- terday—" There is no indication of any opposition to the fourth election of Sir John Romilly; whose address will most likely appear tomorrow, when he is expected to visit the borough." At Southampton, the return of Sir Alexander Cockburn, now the Attorney-General, is safe ; and at Oxford, that of Mr. Page Wood, the new Solicitor-General, is perfectly safe.
At Shrewsbury, Thomas Porter, gamekeeper, was tried for shooting at John Crutchley, farmer, at Drayton-le-Hailes. On the evening of the 5th November, Farmer Crutchley was returning across fields from the house of a neighbour to his own house, and dropped a bank-note : he took a lantern from his house, went back to seek his note, and found it on the path. When again near his own house, he heard the report of a gun, and felt him- self hit with shots on the hand that carried the lantern : he exclaimed to the unknown assailant, " You won't shoot people ? "—then heard the voice of the prisoner reply, '
You a'n't much shot yet" • and a second explosion following, he was wounded by shots in the face and on the breast. He drop- ped his lantern, turned round and bolted back to his friend's house, half a mile off: his friend brought him home. Next day, he was again at the house of his friend, and the prisoner called there : he said to Mr. Crutchley, " I am very sorry that it was you that I shot at last night ; it was lucky you turned back, for I mistook you for another person, and I had another double-barrelled gun, fully loaded, and had you advanced a step further you would have been shot again." It seems that " the prisoner had been an- noyed for some time by a person going about at night with lights and a white sheet, to play upon his fears or superstitions" and that, in mistaking Mr. Crutchley for that person, he had hurt him unintentionally. The pri- soner's master gave him an excellent character. Mr. Justice Patteson coun- selled that he should be found guilty of an assault only ; and the Jury hav- ing done that, the Judge passed this sentence—" Prisoner, though you were annoyed by persons going about your neighbourhood with lanterns and white sheets to frighten you, you could have no possible justification for firing at them ; and if the consequence had been to kill Mr. Crutehley, you must have been convicted of murder. You have no right to use a gun because persons are annoying you. I must pass such a sentence on you as will make you re- member this matter. I will not impose hard labour, as it is not necessary. The sentence is, that you be imprisoned for three calendar months."
Frederick James Burgess, a young farmer and auctioneer at Sandhurst in Kent, has been convicted of forging receipts for a small annuity which was payable to a widow lady out of his rent. Many witnesses at the trial gave Burgess a high character. Sentence, transportation for seven years.
At Stafford Assizes, Edward Abington, a potter's chemist, at Newcastle- under-Lyre, a married man of forty, was convicted of causing Emma Wil- liams to miscarry. Abington was "a respectable man " ; the yowlg woman a Sunday school teacher : he met her at her father's house, seduceeher, and then by threats compelled her submission to an operation by himself, which caused a miscarriage. Mr. Justice Talfourd moralized on the heinousness of his case, and sentenced him to be transported for ten years.
George and Thomas Whitaker, father and son, curiosity-dealers at Cam- bridge, have been convicted of arson. They had threatened their landlord, who was uninsured ; and had removed most of their insured goods just before the fire. Sentence on each, transportation for life.
At Warwick Assizes, on Tuesday, Heeley and Marshall, both young men, were convicted of a burglary, with violence, at Birmingham. These were the burglars with whom Mr. Marston, the bale old silversmith, waged a fight till he was left for dead on the stairs of his house ; the police watching the whole affair through a fan-light, but not interfering, from some inexpli- cable blunder as to what was really going on, although a young lady screamed for aid from an upper window. One of the prisoners was Mr. Marshall's re- lative. Sentence of death was recorded against both. On Tuesday, the Chatham gang of burglars and receivers of stolen goods were put on their trial. One of them, Turner, was admitted to give evi- dence in the principal case ; and the result was that two men were con- victed of burglary, and a man and a woman of feloniously receiving. Han- nah Summers, servant at the public-house used as a receptacle for the stolen property, was acquitted. The burglars were sentenced to be trans- ported for life ; the receivers to be transported for fourteen years. Turner pleaded guilty to another charge of felony, and was sentenced to be impri- soned for six months.
Thomas Drory, the young farmer who murdered poor Jael Denny, and Sarah Chesham, the " professed poisoner" of her neighbourhood in Essex, underwent their capital sentence at Chelmsford, on Tuesday morning, in the presence of a great concourse of countrypeople. Drory died penitently : at the closing scene, he ejaculated, in broken accents, the Scripture text, " This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief,"—" of whom I am the chief ! of whom I am the chief !" he was repeating when the drop fell. Sarah Chesham denied her guilt to the last ; and was with difficulty brought to the scaffold. It was many minutes before her struggles ceased. The assembled multitude behaved with the sedateness of a rural population not innured to such sights.
The confession of Drory shows him to have been of a cold, lowly-organized nature. He states that he met the poor girl, whom he ought to have mar- ried, but whose life he took, by accident on the day of the murder, and ap- pointed to meet her again in the evening—when it would be dark. He took with him the rope, and met her : they sat down on a bank and conversed, and while they talked he slipped the rope round her neck, and had got the end into the loop before she, in the dark, discovered what he was at : she started to her feet, and put her hand inside the noose, but he pulled with all his might, and she immediately fell insensible : he then twisted the rope tightly round her neck, and left her lying in the field as she was found. He took his eggs to Brentwood, ate his oysters and purchased his tea, went home, and retired to bed. The day before the execution, he wrote a petition to the High Sheriff, requesting, in very illiterate language, that the money found on his person by Inspector Coulson (8/. lls. 4d.) should be given to Louisa Last, the mother of Jael Denny, "as part restitution for the grievous injury" he had done her ; "by granting which, would be a great favour to your unfortunate criminal."
This week another fatal boiler-explosion is reported. It occurred on Tues- day afternoon, in Riga Street, Manchester. A factory, four stories high, was let out by Messrs. Hardman and Co. to several parties; motive power being supplied by a steam-engine, the boiler of which was in a detached building. In the factory some fifty persons were employed. At the time of the acci- dent the engine had been stopped for slight repairs, and several men were attempting in vain to start it again by turning the fly-wheel. The force of the explosion brought down the three upper stories upon the lower one, to- gether with a tall chimney, and damaged adjoining buildings. On Wed- nesday eight corpses had been found, and it was believed that another was in the rubbish ; seven persons were seriously hurt, some, it is feared, fa- tally. One of the killed, with one of the wounded, were persons who were passing through the street when the explosion occurred. The engineer is in custody ; it is said that he was intoxicated when the disaster happened.
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