fessed that he had burned the green frock, and the pair of boots in his bedroom were not accounted for. Do these things not convince you that he did the murder? If from anything that has been said you have doubts, your verdict must be "Not Guilty;" but at the same time it is not permitted to any body of men to conjure up doubts, if in the bottom of their conscience they feel none.

The jury then retired.

The prisoner, during the entire charge, sat with his head forward, and his hands resting on the front of the dock. His face wore a drowsy expression of fatigue and vacant ferocity.

After an absence of not more than five or six minutes the jury returned, and to the usual question, "How say you, gentlemen,-Guilty or Not Guilty ?" the foreman, amidst breathless silence, returned the verdict, "Guilty."

The prisoner, in a deep tone of voice, said, "I am innocent all the same, and God Almighty knows it." His expression, however, never changed for a moment, and he retained to the close the same listless sullen look with which he had listened to the Judge's charge.

Baron Rolfe then put on the black cap, and amidst profound silence proceeded to pass upon the prisoner the sentence of the law. He said James Blomfield Rush, after a trial unusually protracted, you have been found guilty of the charge of wilful murder-a crime the highest any human being can perpetrate on another-the deepest under any circumstances of extenuation; but I regret to say that in your case there is everything which could add a deeper dye to guilt the most horrible. It

appears from letters which you yourself put in that to the father of the unfortunate victim of your malice you owe a debt of deep gratitude. You commenced a career of crime by endeavouring to cheat your landlord; you followed it up by making the unfortunate girl whom you had seduced the tool whereby you should commit forgery; and having done that, you terminated your guilty career by the murder of the son and grandson of your friend and benefactor. More cannot be said. It unfortunately sometimes happens that great guilt is too nearly connected with something that is calculated to dazzle the mind; but, fortunately, in your case you have made vice as loathsome as it is terrible. There is no one who witnessed your conduct during the trial, and who heard the evidence produced, who will not feel as the result of that evidence that you must quit this world by an ignominious death, an object of unmitigated abhorrence to every wellregulated mind. I shrink not from making this statement, in order to point out to you the position in which you now stand. To society it must be a matter of perfect indifference what your conduct may be during the few remaining days of life that remain to you. No concealment of the truth in which you may continue to persevere will cast the slightest doubt upon the propriety of the verdict. No confession you can make can add a taper light to the broad glare of daylight guilt disclosed against you. So far, therefore, as society is concerned, the conduct you may pursue is matter of indifference; but to yourself it may be all-important, and I can only conjure you, by every consideration of inte

rest, that you employ the short space of life that yet remains to you in endeavouring by penitence and prayer to reconcile yourself to that offended God before whom you are shortly to appear. In the mysterious dispensations of the Almighty, not only is much evil permitted, but much guilt is allowed to go unpunished. It is, perhaps, presumptuous therefore to attempt to trace the finger of God in the development of any particular crime, but one has felt at times a satisfaction in making such investigations, and I cannot but remark that if you had performed to that unhappy girl the promise you made to her, the policy of the law, which seals the lips of a wife in any proceeding against her husband, might perhaps have allowed your guilt to go unpunished.

The Prisoner. I did not make that promise.

The Judge. You have been convicted on testimony so clear, that observation and comment are unnecessary. Having conjured you to employ the small portion of life which remains to you in that which can alone interest you now, I have to remind you that human interests are for you at an end. I will only add my earnest hope that the only social right that remains to you that of entire seclusion-may be granted, and that no morbid sensibility to guilt, nor any idle curiosity of the vulgar, may be suffered to pry into the secrets of the murderer's cell, or to raise a factitious interest in that in which you are alone concerned. It remains for me to pronounce upon you the awful sentence of the law that you be taken from hence to the place from which you came, and thence to the place of execution; that you be there hanged by

the neck until you are dead, and afterwards that your body be buried within the precincts of the gaol in which you are confined, and may the Almighty have mercy on your soul!

The prisoner at the close of the sentence was immediately removed. He preserved his firmness to the last, and as he passed out of the dock, closely guarded by turnkeys, he was observed by some gentlemen who stood near him to smile.

Rush, on being removed to prison, for some time exhibited the same stolid firmness which he had at his trial: he subsequently, however, appeared to become sensible of his situation, and appeared to pay great attention to his religious duties. A circumstance, however, transpired that showed the extraordinary nerve and coolness of the villain. It will be observed that, during the trial, Mr. John Cann produced, among other things found at Potash Farm, a pocketbook containing memoranda and a cheque for 407.-this pocket-book Rush asked to be allowed to inspect, and it was handed to him; during the few moments it was in his possession, and with all eyes intently fixed upon him he contrived to abstract the cheque, and conceal it in the lining of his hat! Upon missing it Mr. Cann, after vain search, requested the governor of the gaol to sound Rush on the subject, when the hardened villain denied all knowledge of it, and kept to the falsehood for several days. Upon being assured, however, that the Government would probably direct it to be applied to the benefit of his family, he acknowledged the theft, and pointed out the place of conceal

ment.

It is not for this work to minis

ter to the vulgar curiosity that gloats over the last agonies of condemned men; but it is a duty to record the conduct of the perpetrator of a crime which, by its appalling magnitude, takes its place among historical events.

The officers of the gaol state that Rush, from the commencement of his imprisonment, assumed the character of innocence and piety, and so carefully asserted his pretensions to these qualities, and SO over-acted his part, as to throw at once the strongest suspicions on his sincerity. His constant language was, "Thank God, I am quite comfortable in body and mind; I eat well, drink well, and sleep well." The wretched man's sleep, however, was observed by his attendants not to be so quiet as he himself represented it. He asked to receive the sacrament, and, after his conviction, sent for the clergyman whom he was in the habit of attending. Finding, however, that he could not impose on them a doubt of his guilt, he became dissatisfied with them also, and his last interview with them terminated in a violent altercation. The gaol chaplain attended him on the morning of his execution, and he seemed glad to join in devotion; but when ever his guilt was assumed, and confession and repentance were urged on him, his constant reply was, "God knows my heart; He is my judge, and you have prejudged me." The night previous to his execution he kept his bed till eleven or twelve o'clock, and told the turnkeys in attendance on him that he had had a beautiful sleep, yet no five minutes in the interval had passed that his eyes were not wide open and fixed on theirs. About two o'clock, becoming very restless,

he got up, and commenced reading a religious book, passages of which he interlined, expressing at the same time a wish that the book might be given to his family. He was engaged in reading till after ten o'clock, when he went to the chapel and heard service performed with the other prisoners. At its close he was left with the chaplain and Mr. Andrews, who solemnly urged upon him the duties of repentance and confession, but he became much irritated, repeated his innocence, and said that the real criminal would be known in two years. On leaving the chapel he went into the prison yard, and washed his face and hands and the back of his neck with cold water at the pump. When pinioned he said, with a shrug, "This don't go easy, I don't want the cord to hurt me," and the rope was moved a little to give him relief.

His features

The place of execution was the terrace in front of the ancient keep of the Castle, a commanding spot, overlooking a large open space now densely crowded with spectators. The prisoner moved along with great firmness. He was dressed in black, wore patent leather boots, and had his shirt collar, which was scrupulously clean, turned over. had undergone no perceptible change since his trial; his determined expression had not changed, and the man was in all respects the same unwavering, resolute being who for six days conducted his own defence in a court of justice, though oppressed, not only by the conviction of his enormous guilt, but also by the knowledge that it had been so clearly brought home to him. His step never faltered, and he regularly marched to his doom. On catching sight

of the scaffold he lifted his eyes to Heaven, raised as far he could his pinioned hands, and shook his head mournfully from side to side once or twice. The pantomine was perfect, conveying almost as clearly as words a protest of innocence, combined with resignation to his fate. As he walked along he asked the governor what the words were with which the burial service ended. He was told that it was with the benediction, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," &c., and he requested that the drop might fall when the chaplain came to those words.

He then mounted the scaffold, but turned his face to the Castle walls. The hangman immediately drew the white nightcap over his head, and, fastening the fatal rope to the beam, adjusted the noose to his neck. The unhappy man, even at this dreadful moment, had not lost his coolness. "This does not go easy," he said, "put the thing a little higher-take your time-don't be in a hurry." These were his last words.

It should not be omitted here, that the father of this great criminal perished by his own gun, under circumstances so singular, as to justify the suspicion that his son, the only person present, was a parricide; and also that very strange circumstances attended the death of his mother.

In conclusion of this tragedy it may be stated, that Mrs. Jermy recovered, though deprived of her arm; that Eliza Chestney was largely rewarded for her exemplary fidelity; and that the unfortunate Emily Sandford, assisted by the compassionate donations of some individuals, removed with her child to Australia, where, evil

fortune still attending the unhappy young woman, her brother and only protector was drowned in landing from the ship.

THE BRISTOL MURDER.-A murder, remarkable for the insufficiency of its motive, and the barbarity with which it was consummated, occurred in Bristol, in March, and which, owing to local circumstances, and the excitement then prevailing respecting the Stanfield Hall murders, caused unusual interest in the western shires. Unlike that great tragedy, the perpetrator seems to have been actuated by no motives of calculation, and acted on no deliberate plan; on the contrary, she would appear to have proceeded, on a sudden impulse of brute malice, to have completed the deed with fiendish hate, and the robbery seems to have been the sequence and not the motive to the act. Like Rush, the murderess thought to elude justice by a tale palpably absurd and certain of detection; an identity of self-delusion which points to some character of mind common to the deliberative and educated, and the impulsive and animal. The dreadful scene which occurred at her execution places the unregulated passion and appalling terrors of the Bristol murderess in strong contrast to the deliberative purpose and unflinching will of Rush and Mrs. Manning, and to the hypocritical nerve of the former, and the strong firmness of the latter of these great criminals.

The murdered woman, Elizabeth Jefferies, was sixty-one years of age, and of very eccentric habits, residing at 6, Trenchard Street, and possessed of considerable property. No one lived with her but

a maid-servant. On Friday, the 2nd March, it was noticed by the neighbours that the shutters of her house were closed, and as they were not opened for some days, the circumstance was considered suspicious, and information was communicated to the brother of the deceased, who with an officer of police proceeded to the house. The officer gained access to the premises by climbing over a wall at the back. He found that the back door was open, and on proceeding to a bed-room which was situated on the first floor, he found the corpse of a woman, which bore marks of great violence. There was nothing very suspicious in the appearance of the furniture below which attracted attention. The corpse of the deceased was lying on the bed on her right side; there were marks of extreme violence on her person, her head having been, as it were, beaten in, apparently by some blunt instrument. There was a large quantity of coagulated blood on her temple and nostrils. There were also tracks of blood on a chair adjoining the bedside, and along the floor to the door, where there was a large pool of blood. They then entered a closet in the room, where they found that some documents and other papers had been turned over, and everything was in great confusion. The boxes in the upper rooms had also evidently been ransacked and searched, papers being strewed about in every direction. Information was obtained that in January last deceased had applied to a person to get her a servant, and that he sent her Sarah Thomas on the 5th of February. It was ascertained that this person's parents resided at Pensford, and thither the officers proceeded. The mother VOL. XCI.

admitted that she had a daughter Sarah, but denied that she was at home, and was indignant at being aroused at such an hour-it being between one and two o'clock in the morning. After a while, the police heard a rustling as of paper inside the house, after which the door was opened, and they found the prisoner, Sarah Thomas, concealed in the coal-hole. in the coal-hole. Inspector Bell charged her with having committed the murder. On making a further search of the coal-hole they found concealed one large silver gravy and five silver table spoons, all of which were marked with the initials "E. J." in a flourish. They then went up stairs, where they found several boxes, and in one of them was a lady's gold watch, with a massive gold guard chain attached. In the pockets of the prisoner they likewise found twenty-seven sovereigns, four halfsovereigns, 15s. 4d. in silver, and 24d. in copper; also a pair of gold earrings. The prisoner expressed great reluctance when informed that she must accompany the officers to the station-house. her arrival there she was again searched by the female searcher employed at the station-house, who found concealed in her stockings five silver tea-spoons, likewise marked with the initials "E. J." in a flourish, and which were identified by the brother of the deceased.

On

An inquest was held on the body of the deceased, at which the above facts were proved, but which was chiefly remarkable for a statement made by a voluntary witness, which offers an almost inexplicable example of falsehood.

Mary Ann Sullivan, a girl eleven years of age, was called; and, having been duly cautioned to speak the truth, she deposed that her 2 E