he had cut it off, and thrown the body into the ditch. On hearing of the finding of the body, and of George Manners' position, he deter mined to brave it out, with what almost fatal success we have seen. He dared not sell the ring, and so buried it in his barn. 109. THOMAS PATTESON'S CASE. (CAMDEN PELHAM. Chronicles of Crime. Vol. II, p. 599.) ed. 1891. The trial of this person took place at Aylesbury, on Tuesday, March 10th, 1840, before Mr. Baron PARKE, when the indictment charged that the prisoner had been guilty of the manslaughter of John Charles, on the 21st of October previous, at Buckland, in Buckinghamshire. The case excited a great deal of interest in the county, from the condition in life of the deceased and the prisoner, who were both respectable farmers, and from the close intimacy which had long existed between them, as well as from the mysterious manner of the death of the former. Though the coroner's jury returned a verdict of manslaughter only, the prosecutors sent up a bill of indictment for murder to the grand jury, which they ignored. The main circumstances of the case were, that on the 20th of October, 1839, the deceased John Charles went, about ten o'clock in the forenoon, to the "Boot," on Buckland Common, where he had some beer; and while there, the prisoner came in to take lunch, about twelve o'clock. They remained talking and drinking together until about five o'clock in the evening, when the landlord, John Edwards, came in, with whom they had some more drink. About half past ten o'clock at night they rose to go away, their road being the same to pretty near their respective homes. Before they went, however, Charles said, "I think I am the best man now, let us walk the chalk;" meaning that he was the less intoxicated of the two. "Walking the chalk" is, in this part of the country, the test of drunkenness, and the experiment is performed by the attempt to walk straight upon a The chalked line drawn across the floor, or by walking along the straight line between two layers of bricks where the floor is of that material. The experiment was tried in this case, and the result proved that Charles, the deceased, was the less affected by drink of the two; and he therefore undertook, as is usual between two companions on such occasions, to see the other safe home. Neither of them ever reached his home, for the deceased perished on the way, and the prisoner having been taken into custody the same night, remained in Aylesbury jail up to the day of the trial. The first person who made known the dreadful catastrophe was the prisoner himself, who, about halfpast twelve o'clock on the same night, in a very wild and still intoxicated state, went to Johnson, the policeman, in the town of Tring, about two miles from the place where the death took place, and told him "he had killed a man." At first the policeman did not believe him, thinking it the mere folly of drink; but he persisted, and said he would take him to the place where the body lay. The policeman then went with him, and in a lane leading to the homes of both parties, the body of the deceased was found lying on its back on the grass, in a place not exactly on the road, but where a gap in the field, which was the termination of a footpath running parallel with the lane inside of the hedge, led into the road. That path was one which had been made by people going through the adjoining land to avoid a bad part of the road; and having passed that portion of the road, they came into the road again. The prisoner, before the body was found, had told the policeman that he was sure the person he had killed was "Joe Kibble, the sweep of Tring, who had been sent by Humphrey Bull to kill him." Humphrey Bull was the relieving officer of the union, of which both the prisoner and the deceased were guardians, and was of different politics from the prisoner, the latter being a liberal, and Bull a conservative; but they were on good terms; and nothing could show more strongly the strange state of delusion which the effects of intemperate drinking had wrought upon the prisoner's mind on that fatal night, than that he should give as a reason for killing one of his friends, that he believed him to be an assassin sent by another friend for the purpose of murdering him! On examining the body of the deceased, it was found to bear marks of dreadful beating on the head and face, which had produced great effusion of blood. The bones of the nose were completely broken, and a surgeon deposed to a concussion of the brain, as one of the effects of the violence which caused death. In the pockets of the deceased were found a tenpound note, a five-pound note, and some sovereigns.. On the notes being taken out of the pocket, the prisoner immediately exclaimed, "These are the two banknotes which Bull gave Joe Kibble to murder me!" At that time nobody present was aware that the body was that of farmer Charles. So far from that, the policeman actually sent a person to the house of Charles, to ask him to come to see the body. The prisoner had previously told the police that he had been going home from the Buckland Inn, with his friend Charles, but the latter parted from him somewhere on the road, he could not tell where. The probable solution of the mystery is, that the deceased, who was proved to be, when in his cups, of a jocose disposition, and rather addicted to the too-often dangerous practice of practical joking, or what is vulgarly called "larking," had, in going home that night, resolved to frighten Patteson, who, though a man of prodigious bodily strength, was known to be rather deficient in courage, and had before expressed fears of going home by that lonely road. With this view, it is supposed that Charles, taking advantage of the very drunken state in which Patteson was, slipped away from him among some trees which stood at the entrance of the footpath which we have before described, and which ran parallel with the road along which Patteson had to proceed to his home. A high bank and hedge would screen any person going along this pathway from the view of another on the road. At the place where the pathway led again into the road, at the gap, there was a mound of earth with an open space between that and the hedge, so that a person coming from the gap might, by going partly behind that mound, be concealed until he came suddenly in view, and this is probably what the deceased did in order to frighten his companion; and the position of the body near the gap when found seemed to strengthen that supposition. Whether the deceased laid hold of the prisoner before the latter saw him or not must remain forever involved in obscurity, as the panic-terror into which Patteson was suddenly thrown, operating upon the drunkenness, caused him to destroy the unfortunate man immediately; and it is probable that, from his strength, his first blow knocked him senseless. The prisoner said, that, while he was beating the supposed murderer on the ground, he asked him "who sent him to kill him," and that he pronounced the name of "Bull" three times. This of course was the mere hallucination of the temporary frenzy produced by drunkenness and terror. When the prisoner and deceased left the inn together, the latter had a knobbed walking stick in his hand, the other had none. The stick was found under the body of the deceased, but not marked with blood, or presenting any appearance that could show that it had been used in inflicting the wounds by the prisoner. Those wounds the surgeon was of opinion were inflicted by the fist only. The prisoner was in an agony of grief as soon as he was made aware that it was his friend and companion Charles that he had so unwittingly slain, and continued in a state of deep affliction, even up to the time of his trial. On behalf of the accused, evidence was adduced which showed that he was a most amiable and respectable man. Mr. Baron PARKE, in summing up the evidence, told the jury that if they were of opinion that the delusion which operated on the mind of the prisoner, and led to the perpetration of the fatal act, was caused by such an alarm of personal danger as would not have produced a similar effect upon the reasonable mind of a sober man, they must find him guilty of manslaughter, otherwise the act would be excusable homicide. The jury returned a verdict of "Guilty of manslaughter," accompanied by a recommendation to mercy. Mr. Baron PARKE, in pronouncing judgment, observed, that from the time he had read the depositions he believed the fatal act of the prisoner to have been the result of a delusion produced upon a mind which intoxication had deprived of the control of reason; that the prisoner never had the slightest intention of killing his friend, with whom it was proved he never had any quarrel, was clear beyond all doubt. It was not right that he should, however, go altogether unpunished, but in consideration of his having already suffered five months' imprisonment, he should sentence him to be imprisoned for two months only, hoping that this case would be a warning to all who heard it of the danger of indulging in intemperate habits. 110. THE GLOUCESTER CHILD-MURDER. Grain or Chaff: The Autobiography of a Police p. 180.) . Another murder case comes into my recollection, tried also at Gloucester, before Mr. Justice Lopes. I was asked to defend, and I had the rare satisfaction to my own mind of obtaining what is not often looked for in a trial for murder a clear acquittal. This case profoundly impressed me by its unutterable pathos; a distracted human soul, torn by conflicting emotions and struggling in vain with destiny the sort of tale that would have moved the chorus to pity in a Greek tragedy. The accused was a young woman leading an ordinary everyday life, with nothing against her but the one fall of her early womanhood; and yet it was the child of this lawless romance she was accused of having murdered. By her own confession (A. C. PLOWDEN. Magistrate. 1903. she had willfully taken its life by pushing it into a deep well close to the cottage where she lived. There was no other evidence against her of any kind. Was it true? and what made her do it? were the questions raised by the case. Alas! she had herself explained the motive. A lover had found his way to her lonely cottage, a lover who was willing and anxious to marry her but for what he considered the incumbrance of the child. Hence the agony of mind which tore the poor woman in two. Either the child or the lover must go, whatever the love she might feel for either. There was no room in her little world for the double joys of wife and mother, which come to most women almost as their natural right and provide their highest happiness. One can imagine what the struggle must have been to a simple creature, humbly placed, without much education, and without the aid of those distractions in life which serve to divert the thoughts and still the uneasy prickings of temptation. If in the end the forces against which she had to contend proved too strong for her moral nature, it will be seen that the struggle was fierce and bitter. Let her speak for herself, almost in her own words. The prisoner was the first to mention the calamity that had befallen her child. Wringing her hands and weeping bitterly, she told a neighbor, who was attracted by her sobs, that her poor child had fallen into the well. Later in the day, when the dead body had been recovered, the wretched woman, after a fresh outburst of grief, confessed to her mother that she herself had done it, and begged her mother to pray for her. She had wanted the child to fall in, and had given it apples to throw in, hoping in this way it might fall in, but to no purpose. The next day, in a calmer frame of mind, she adhered to this confession and told her relatives "she knew she would be hung, but she could bear it no longer. She had done it because she saw no other way of being happy with the man she loved." By this time the matter had become known to the police, and the prisoner, becoming frightened, made a long explanation, which was taken down, to the effect that the child had fallen by accident. This statement she afterwards declared to be false, and again she repeated the story about the apples, and said she had thrown the child in. "Once before," she added, "I took the child to throw him in. I held him over the well, when my dear boy looked up and said, 'Don't put me in this dark hole, mamma.' I had not the heart to do it, and I took him back." This was the whole story; there was no corroboration from any quarter. Which of the prisoner's statements was the true one? Was it her confession or its retraction? I pressed on the jury as well as I could the danger of a conviction under the circumstances, and reminding them of the old adage that truth lies at the bottom of the well, asked if it did not apply with striking force to the case they had to consider. They took an hour to consult together, and returned into Court with a verdict of "Not Guilty." Nine of the twelve, I afterwards heard, were in favor of a conviction. The verdict was not popular. The excuses which pressed themselves on my mind were overlooked by an angry crowd, and the prisoner, as she left the Court, had to be protected by the police to escape their violence. 111. THE KENT CASE. (J. B. ATLAY. Famous Trials of the Century. 1899. p. 113.) In the little village of Road, some four miles to the northeast of Frome, and on the confines of Somersetshire and Wiltshire, stands Road Hill House, and there in June, 1860, resided Mr. Samuel Savile Kent, deputy inspector of factories. He had been twice married, and was the father of a numerous family; by his first wife he had three daughters and one son living, and his second wife was the mother of three children and was then expecting her confinement at no distant date. On the night of Friday, the 29th of June, the household consisted of just a dozen inmates, Mr. and Mrs. Kent, the seven children, and three female servants, nurse, cook, and housemaid. Eleven o'clock was the usual hour for retiring, Mr. Kent was in the habit of going over the premises with a lantern to ascertain that all doors and windows were safely fastened, and on this occasion he went his rounds as usual. two The house is a substantial one, a little retired from the road, and inclosed in its own grounds. On entering the front door there is a large central hall, on the left side of which is the library with drawingroom behind it, and on the right the dining room, carried out beyond the general area of the house with a flat roof, over which nothing has been built. At the back of the hall is the front staircase, at the foot of which a door leads to the kitchen and offices. There are two floors above, and on each of them is a landing on to which the bedrooms open. On the first floor above the library were the bedroom and dressing room of Mr. and Mrs. Kent; there were doors to the dressing room, one leading into the bedroom, the other on to the landing close to the nursery door; this latter, however, was fastened up by a heavy piece of furniture placed against it. Over the hall was the nursery, divided into two compartments, in one of which slept the nurse and two of Mrs. Kent's children, Francis Savile, a boy of nearly four, and a little girl of about twelve months; its single window looked out upon the lawn, and a door gave admission into a smaller room beyond, used as a dressing room, with a window looking out over the flat roof of the dining room. Mrs. Kent's eldest child, a girl of five, slept in a cot in her parents' room. The rest of the floor was taken up by a spare bedroom and two lumber rooms. Overhead, the bedroom above Mrs. Kent was occupied by the two eldest daughters of Mr. Kent; in the one on the opposite side the housemaid and the cook slept together; between them and over Mr. Kent's dressing room was the smaller bedroom of Constance, his third daughter, aged sixteen. The bedroom of her brother William, aged fifteen, and two lumber rooms, completed the floor. The nurse, Elizabeth Gough, was a young woman of three-and-twenty. She bore an ex cellent character, and had been with the Kents for about nine months. This Friday had been a hard day for her; the number of servants kept was hardly adequate to the establishment, and in addition to her own duties she had been up early to assist in a house cleaning. She put the children to bed as usual, and after family prayers Mrs. Kent came into the nursery, as was her wont, and exchanged a few words with the nurse, after which the latter, who was thoroughly tired out, undressed herself and went to bed. About five o'clock she woke up, noticed that the clothes had fallen off the body of the baby, who slept close to her bed; and in raising herself up to readjust them she became aware that Savile's cot, which stood on the farther side of the room away from the bed and opposite the door, was empty. This did not seem to strike her as anything remarkable. Mrs. Kent's room was opposite, she was rather fidgety about her children, the boy had been taking medicine, and his mother might have heard him cry, have stepped across the passage and carried him off; so, being unwilling to disturb the household on a false alarm, she composed herself to sleep again, and did not awake til a quarter past six. This was her usual hour for rising, and the young woman got up, made her toilet, read a chapter in the Bible, and said her prayers with a calmness that did credit to her bringing up, and then walked across to Mrs. Kent's room to inquire for the little boy. She knocked at the door and got no answer, went back, dressed the baby, and again knocked at her mistress's door. This time there was an answer, and Gough asked if Master Savile was there. "With me?" replied Mrs. Kent; "certainly not.' "Well, ma'am," said Gough, “he is not in the nursery." This at once brought the mother from her bedroom, Gough ran upstairs to inquire of the two elder Miss Kents |