The London Sessions at Guildhall commenced on Wednesday. The Recorder
congratulated the Grand Jury on the lightest calendar known for some years past.
There was a large attendance of Magistrates on Tuesday, at the Ge- neral Quarter Sessions for Sorry. Some discussion arose on the re- port of a Committee, which had been formed to consider the propriety of appointing a Stipendiary Chairman of the Sessions. It recom- mended that a Chairman should be appointed, at a salary of 1,000/. a year ; that the appointment should be vested in the Chief Justice of the King's Bench ; and that the candidates should be chosen from bar- risters of seven years' standing. Mr. Nicholson moved the adoption of the report. Mr. Woolley moved, as an amendment, that the appointment be vested in the Magistracy, and not in the Chief Justice; and that the salary be 800/. per annum. This amendment was ultimately adopted. Sir '1'. Turton stood up for the intellects of the old Unpaid, and defied the Newspapers.
Two Police constables, William Thompson and Thomas Hammond, tried at the Surry Sessions on Thursday, were sentenced to two months' imprisonment for an assault upon and false imprisonment of James Clarke, the gardener and porter of Nelson Square, in revenge for a complaint made by Clarke to the Superintendent. Clarke had also given offence to these worthies by interfering to prevent their court- ing the servant-girls, not only down the areas but in the kitchens of the neighbouring houses. This conduct of his they pronounced to be "an interruption of their duty."
A reward of 100 guineas has been offered by Messrs. Williams the employers of Shepherd, in addition to that offered by the Home Office, or the apprehension of his murderer ; but there is hitherto no clue to a discovery.
An inquisition was held on Tuesday before Mr. Newman, in White- cross Street prison, touching the death of Lewis Roberts, who was immured for the trifling debt of 41. 5s. He was a printer employed by Mr. Hansard. The surgeon of the prison stated, that when the de- ceased was brought in he was labouring under a pulmonary disease, and was treated accordingly ; but there were no hopes from the first. He was brought in on the 5th of December, and died on Sunday morn- ing last. Verdict, " Natural Death." The officer who arrested Roberts, appears to have executed his commission with great harshness.
A Customhouse officer named Buchanan, a sailor named Rosen- burgh, and an old man named Peterson, who kept a lodging-house, were drowned in the course of last week, by falling into the new canal connected with the London Docks. There is nothing to prevent a passenger on a dark night from stepping over the quay into the water on one side, or into the street below on the other. The place being a thoroughfare, either lamps or a chain should be fixed along the sides by night. The Coroner's Jury would have levied a deodand on the Dock Company in the case of Buchanan, but they had not the power, it seems. The Jury of the Inquest upon the sailor brought in a ver- dict " That the deceased died through his immersion in the water." Did they suppose he died through his being taken out of the water?
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