Elias Lucas and Mary Reeder were executed at Cambridge on the 13th. Lucas was the husband of the female convict's sister, whom they had poisoned. Morbid curiosity had attracted from twenty to thirty thousand spectators. In the procession from the jail to the scaffold there was a great parade of county magistrates.
Louisa Hartley was charged at the Southwark Police Court, on the 16th, with an Attempt to poison her Father, who is a fellowship porter. On the previous morning she made the coffee for breakfast, on tasting it, it burnt Harley's mouth, and he charged the girl with having put poison in his cup, which she denied; he then tasted her coffee, and found it had no unpleasant flavor. His daughter then snatched away his cup, and threw the contents into a wash-hand basin. But in spite of her tears and protestations of innocence, he took the basin to Guy's Hospital, where it was found that the coffee must have contained vitriol. The girl, who was said to be of weak intellect, and stood sobbing at the bar, being questioned, only shook her head, and said she had nothing to say. At a subsequent hearing the magistrate decided that there was sufficient evidence for a committal.
A man named William Bennison, a workman in an iron-foundry, has been committed to prison at Leith on suspicion of having Poisoned his Wife. The circumstances of the case are extraordinary. The scene of the murder is an old-fashioned tiled house in Leith. Bennison and his wife occupied the second floor of a house, in which also resides Alexander Milne, a cripple from his infancy, well known to the frequenters of Leith Walk, where he sits daily, in a small cart drawn by a dog. Mrs. Bennison, after, it is said, partaking of some gruel, became very ill, and died on Monday, the 22d inst. The dog which drew the cripple's cart died about the same time; suspicion was drawn upon the husband, and he was apprehended, and the dog's body conveyed to Surgeon's Hall for examination. Some weeks before, Bennison had purchased arsenic from a neighboring druggist, to kill rats, as he said. When suspected he called on the druggist, and requested him and his wife not to mention that he had purchased the arsenic. He even pressed for a written denial of the fact, adding that there might be arsenic found in his wife's stomach, but he did not put it there. On the Monday previous to her death it is said he enrolled her name in a benefit society, by which on her death he was entitled to a sum of £6. At the prisoner's examination before the sheriff, the report of the chemists pronounced the contents of the dog's stomach to have been metallic poison. The accused was eventually committed for trial. The deceased and her husband were members of the Wesleyan body, and bore an excellent character for piety. Bennison professed to be extremely zealous in behalf of religion, and was in the habit of administering its consolations to such as would accept of them. His "gifts" of extempore prayer are said to be extensive.
Two Men were shot at by a Gamekeeper lately in a wood belonging to Lord Wharncliffe, near Barnsley. The game on this estate is preserved by a solicitor, who resides near Wokefield, who employs Joseph Hunter as gamekeeper. Both the men were severely injured, and Cherry, one of them, sued Hunter as the author of the offense, in the Barnsley County Court, and the case was heard on the 19th instant. Cherry stated, that on the 23d February he went to see the Badsworth hounds meet at the village of Notton, and in coming down by the side of a wood he saw the defendant, who asked plaintiff and two others where the hounds were. Plaintiff told him they were in Notton-park. These men left Hunter, and walked down by the side of Noroyds-wood. They went through the wood, when one of the men who was with him began cutting some sticks. Plaintiff then saw Hunter, who was about twenty-five yards from them, coming toward them: the men began to run away, when plaintiff said to the other, "He's going to shoot us;" and before he had well delivered the words, he was shot in the arm and side, and could not run with the others. A surgeon proved that the wounds were severe and in a dangerous part of the body. The two men who were with the plaintiff corroborated his evidence. The judge said that defendant deserved to be sent to York for what he had done already. The damages might have been laid at £100 or £1000 had plaintiff been acting lawfully; but he thought plaintiff had acted with discretion in laying the damages at £10 for which he should give a verdict, and all the costs the law would allow.
An Affecting Case occurred at the Mansion House on the 23d. William Powers, a boy, was brought up on the charge of picking a gentleman's pocket of a handkerchief. A little boy, who had seen the theft, was witness against him. The prisoner made a feeble attempt to represent the witness as an accomplice; but he soon abandoned it, and said, with tears, that he "did not believe the other boy to be a thief at all." The alderman, moved by his manner, asked him if he had parents? He said he had, but they were miserably poor. "My father was, when I last saw him, six months ago, going into the workhouse. What was I to do? I was partly brought up to the tailoring business, but I can get nothing to do at that. I am able to job about, but still I am compelled to be idle. If I had work, wouldn't I work! I'd be glad to work hard for a living, instead of being obliged to thieve and tell lies for a bit of bread." Alderman Carden—If I send you for a month to Bridewell, and from thence into an industrial school, will you stick honestly to labor? The prisoner—Try me. You shall never see me here or in any other disgraceful situation again. Alderman Carden—I will try you. You shall go to Bridewell for a month, and to the School of Occupation afterward, where you will have an opportunity of reforming. The wretched boy expressed himself in terms of gratitude to the alderman, and went away, as seemed to be the general impression in the justice-room, for the purpose of commencing a new life.
On the 5th a pilot-boat brought into Cowes the master of the Lincoln, sailing from Boston for California. He had reached the latitude of 4° N. and longitude 25° W., and when at 10.30 p.m. of March 2, during a heavy shower of rain, and without any menacing appearance in the air, the ship was Struck with Lightning, which shivered the mainmast, and darted into the hold. On opening the scuttle, volumes of smoke were emitted, and finding it impossible to extinguish the fire, the crew endeavored to stifle it by closing every aperture. In this state they remained for nearly four days, with the fire burning in the hold, when they were relieved from their perilous situation by the providential appearance of the Maria Christina, and taken on board. Previous to leaving the ill-fated brig, the hatches were opened, when the flames burst forth, and in thirty minutes afterward the mainmast fell over the side. The unfortunate crew were most kindly treated by Captain Voss, the master of the Maria Christina, who did every thing in his power for their relief.
A Miss Downie met, on the 4th, with an Extraordinary Death at Traquair-on-the-Tweed. She had suffered, since childhood, from severe pains in the head and deafness; her health had been gradually declining for the last three years, and in August last she was seized with most painful inflammation in the left ear, accompanied by occasional bleedings also from the ear. On the 20th of March an ordinary-sized metallic pin was extracted from the left ear, which was enveloped in a firm substance with numerous fibres attached to it; several hard bodies, in shape resembling the grains of buckwheat, but of various colors, were also taken out of the right ear. The poor girl endured the most intense pain, which she bore with Christian fortitude till death terminated her sufferings. It is believed the pin must have lodged in the head for nearly twenty years, as she never recollected of having put one in her ear, but she had a distinct remembrance of having, when a child, had a pin in her mouth, which she thought she had swallowed.
The Poet Bowles.—The canon's absence of mind was very great, and when his coachman drove him into Bath he had to practice all kinds of cautions to keep him to time and place. The poet once left our office in company with a well-known antiquary of our neighborhood, since deceased, and who was as absent as Mr. Bowles himself. The servant of the latter came to our establishment to look for him, and, on learning that he had gone away with the gentleman to whom we have referred, the man exclaimed, in a tone of ludicrous distress, "What! those two wandered away together? then they'll never be found any more!" The act of composition was a slow and laborious operation with him. He altered and re-wrote his MS. until, sometimes, hardly anything remained of the original, excepting the general conception. When we add that his handwriting was one of the worst that ever man wrote—insomuch that frequently he could not read that which he had written the day before—we need not say that his printers had very tough work in getting his works into type. At the time when we printed for Mr. Bowles we had one compositor in our office (his death is recorded in our paper of to-day), who had a sort of knack in making out the poet's hieroglyphics, and he was once actually sent for by Mr Bowles into Wiltshire to copy some MS. written a year or two before, which the poet had himself vainly endeavored to decipher.—Bath Chronicle.
