Court of Exchequer, on the 15th of November. For the prisoners, Mr. Serjeant Manning protested, that Mr. Baron Platt, the judge who presided at the trial, had excluded important evidence from his notes; but the Judges declined to entertain that question. Mr. Manning and Mr. Collier then proceeded to argue, that the Felicidade was wrongfully taken, as she had no slaves on board; that the treaty with Brazil, declaring slave trading to be piracy, (under which the prisoners were tried,) had no power to alter the laws of Brazil, to which the prisoners were amenable, and which did not make slave trading a crime; that the Echo was wrongfully taken, because she was boarded by Mr. Palmer, who had not the rank of Lieutenant, required by the treaty for the capturing officer; and that, having been wrongfully taken, the crews of the foreign vessels had a right to resort to violence in order to recapture them. For the Crown, Mr. Godson in effect contended, that the treaty constituting the crime piracy exonerated this country from responsibility as to the internal laws of Brazil; and that where persons accused of a crime were captured by the proper authorities, they were not justified in committing murder to escape, even if there were irregularities; but he insisted that the two schooners were rightly captured, since the evidence of the Felicidade's traffic was sufficient, and Lieutenant Stupart actually commanded the party that captured the Echo, though Mr. Palmer boarded it.

The learned Judges having thus heard the case argued by the Common Law Bar, desired to hear a further argument by learned Civilians, and met on the 3rd of

December in Serjeant's Inn Hall for that purpose; when Dr. Addams and Dr. Harding appeared for the prisoners, and Sir John Dodson for the Crown. The drift of the argument varied but little from the points urged by the members of the Common Law Bar.

Finally, the Judges declared the conviction invalid on two grounds

first, that it is not piracy for the Brazilians to carry on the slave trade until they have made it to be so by Brazilian municipal law; and, secondly, that the Felicidade was wrongfully taken, not having any slaves on board, and, therefore, that she did not become a British ship, and was not accordingly justified in capturing the Echo. The prisoners were therefore liberated, and sent to Brazil at the expense of the British Government.

NORFOLK CIRCUIT.
AYLESBURY, March, 1846.
(Before Mr. Baron Parke.)
THE SALT HILL MURDER.

John Tawell was indicted for the wilful murder of Sarah Hart, at Salt Hill, on the 1st of January last. The prisoner, who was dressed in the garb of a Quaker, pleaded "Not Guilty."

The Court House was crowded to excess, and the greatest interest was taken in the proceedings, not only in the neighbourhood, but in the metropolis.

Mr. Serjeant Byles stated the case for the prosecution. He began by making the jury aware that in a case of this kind they were not to expect direct evidence. No man (he said) who meditates

the crime of assassination by poison fails to take some precaution, so that, at all events, demonstrative evidence shall be inaccessible. No eye sees death poured into the cup, save that which is All-seeing and in every place. All that a human tribunal can do is to gather the circumstances of the case, and from them to form as conscientious a judgment as fallible mortals can do. The learned counsel proceeded to state, that the prisoner was formerly a chemist and druggist. Soon after the death of his first wife, Sarah Hart, then a young woman of about thirty, entered into his service, and when she left it she was in the family way. After quitting his service she lived in Crawford Street, London, where he was in the habit of visiting her. She afterwards lived successively at Paddington Green, and Bath Place, Slough, on the Great Western Road, a quarter of a mile beyond the Windmill public-house. She had two children with her, and depended for support on the prisoner, who was in the habit of supplying her with money. He himself had married a second wife, and lived at Berkhampstead in apparent affluence. But this was not his real situation, as would appear from the evidence of his banker's clerk, who would show that he had overdrawn his account. On the 1st of January last, the prisoner was at the Jerusalem Coffee House, in Cornhill, and told the waiter he was going to dine at the west end of the town, desiring that his great coat should be left for him till his return. He did not go there, but to the station of the Great Western Railway, and proceeded by the four o'clock train to Slough. He went to

Sarah Hart's house, and it would appear by the evidence, that in a short time afterwards she went by his direction to the Windmill public-house for a bottle of porter. She was then well and in good spirits. She borrowed a corkscrew, and returned with it and the porter to Bath Place. Very shortly after her return, Mrs. Ashley, who resided in the next house, heard a noise in Sarah Hart's room; these cottages consisting of two very small rooms on the ground floor. Mrs. Ashley hearing a moan, or stifled screams, became alarmed, and, taking up her candle, went down the path leading from the cottage to the road; but before she reached the gate she saw the prisoner approaching the gate which terminated a similar path from Sarah Hart's cottage. Mrs. Ashley would state that at this time the moans of the deceased were distinctly audible. The prisoner went to the gate; he trembled, appeared greatly agitated, and had much difficulty in opening the gate. Mrs. Ashley said, "What is the matter with my neighbour? am afraid she is ill." The pri soner made no answer, but passed out of the gate and went towards Slough. Mrs. Ashley then went into the house, and observed in Sarah Hart's room, just before the fire-place, a small table, and on it a bottle of porter open and partly drunk, also two tumblers, in one of which was some froth, and in the other porter or porter and water, it was not certain which. Sarah Hart was lying on the floor; her cap was off, and her hair hanging down; her clothes were up to her knees; one stocking down and one shoe off. She was still continuing the sound of moaning.

Mrs. Ashley raised her, and asked what ailed her, but she could not speak. Mrs. Ashley called in two neighbours, and a Mr. Champneys, surgeon, who felt her pulse, and said he could discover one or two beats. He put his hand under her clothes to feel her heart, but could discover no pulsation; she was dead. In the mean time, it would be shown that the prisoner was going on quickly to the railway station.

He had come that day from London, and was about to return; but instead of going to the station, he got into an omnibus to go to Eton, and desired to be set down at Herschel House, which is in Slough, a few hundred yards from the station. He was set down at Herschel House, where it appeared he had no business, for, on getting up to the door, he walked on towards Eton. What became of him in the interim did not appear; but he certainly went back to the station, and took a place in a first-class carriage for London. At that time suspicion became attached to the prisoner. Another gentleman of the name of Champneys, the Rev. Mr. Champneys, was there, and suffered him to depart. But as soon as he was gone, Mr. Champneys communicated his suspicions to the person who conducts the electric telegraph. A signal was made to the station in London, that a person was in the first-class carriages who ought to be watched. Long before the arrival of the train at the London terminus, a policeman was on the platform, and as soon as the prisoner got out of the carriage, the policeman saw him get into an omnibus, and putting on a plain coat over his police dress, he stepped up behind the omnibus with the conductor. The omnibus

proceeded to the Bank, where the prisoner got out, the policeman taking sixpence from him. He went forward to the Wellington statue, turned round, looked back, and then went to the Jerusalem Coffee House, in Cornhill, and inquired for the great coat already mentioned. The waiter gave him the coat, and he then went from Cornhill down Gracechurch Street to London Bridge, and over that to another coffee house in the Borough, the policeman still watching him, and taking care, of course, that he should not be observed. The prisoner stayed there about half an hour. He then came out, and retraced his steps over London Bridge, and went down Cannon Street, to a lodging house in Scott's Yard, kept by a person of the name of Hughes, a member of the Society of Friends. The policeman having waited half an hour, and finding the prisoner did not come out of the lodging house, went away. The next morning further intelligence was received from Slough, and the policeman, taking another officer with him, proceeded to the house in Scott's Yard. He found that the prisoner had left the house; and he then went to the Jerusalem Coffee House, in Cornhill, where he found the prisoner, and said to him, "I believe you were down at Slough yesterday?" He denied it. He said he knew nobody at Slough, and had not been there. "You must be mistaken," said he, "in the identity; my station in life places me above suspicion." The officer, however, took the prisoner into custody, and took him down to Salt Hill, where he was handed over to the custody of Perkins, the superintendent of the Eton police. He slept that night

in Perkins's house. On the next day, at dinner, some conversation took place about Sarah Hart. The prisoner said, "That wretched and unfortunate woman once lived in my service for nearly two years and a half. I suppose you did not know that, Perkins?" Mr. Perkins said he had heard so, but was not certain about it. The prisoner added, "She left me about five years ago. She was a good servant when she lived with me. She has often sent to me for money." The prisoner was cautioned to mind what he said, as it would be taken down and used against him as evidence. He replied, that he had no objection to that. He was asked if he had the deceased's letters. He said he did not keep letters of that sort. "I was pestered," he said, "with letters from her when I was in London, and I determined to give her no more money. bad woman, a very bad woman. She sent me a letter threatening to do something. She said she would make away with herself if I did not give her any money. I went down to her house and told her I would not give her any more money. She then asked me to give her a drop of porter. She had a glass, and I had a glass. She held in her hand over the glass of stout a very small phial, not bigger than her finger, and said I will, I will!' She poured something out of the phial into the stout, and drank part of it, and did so❞—and then the prisoner described her manner by signs. He continued, "She then lay down on the rug, and I walked out. I should not have gone out, if I thought she had been in earnest; I certainly should not have left her." Now, gentle

She was a

In

men, (said the learned counsel,) you will observe, that in this conversation the prisoner expressly states, that she took something out of a small phial at that time in his presence. The learned Serjeant then reverted to the scene at Salt Hill. By direction of the Coroner a post mortem examination took place the day after the woman's death. The surgeons could discover no external injury to account for death. They found no such appearance in the brain, lungs, heart or intestines. opening the body one of the surgeons thought he smelt prussic acid; the other did not. The contents of the stomach were taken to Mr. Cooper, a scientific chemist in London, and chemically examined. Tests were applied for oxalic acid, for sulphuric acid, for opium, for various mineral poisons, and for prussic acid. Prussic acid was found in the stomach, and it produced what was an infallible test of its presence-" Prussian blue." blue." At this time it was not known that the prisoner had had any prussic acid at all, and there was no reason at that time to attribute death to prussic acid, except from what had been found in the stomach. Subsequently the remainder of the stomach was taken to Mr. Cooper, and it was tried by sulphate of iron, nitrate of silver, and cyanide of silver, and prussic acid was clearly proved to exist. Mr. Cooper was now able to say, observing the contents of the two portions of the stomach, that in the stomach there were not fewer than fifty grains of prussic acid, according to the strength of the prussic acid of the London Pharmacopoeia. Owing to the publicity which things of this kind naturally obtain, it was discovered that, on

the Wednesday when the alleged murder was committed, the prisoner had been to the shop of a chemist in Bishopsgate Street, and asked for two drachms of Scheele's prussic acid. He said he wanted it for an external injury. He brought a bottle with him with a glass stopper, but the shopman gave him another bottle, which was labelled for him, and he took it away with him on the day he left London. It would be shown that he was again at the chemist's shop on the Thursday, the day after he slept at the lodging house; and that he then said he had lost the bottle he had before, and obtained the bottle which he had originally brought and left there. These, the learned counsel said, were the material circumstances of this attempt on the life of the deceased. But there was other evidence which would lead to the belief that this was not the first attempt which had been made by the prisoner upon her life.

The learned counsel then detailed a supposed attempt to destroy the deceased woman by poison in September last; and then proceeded to comment upon the inconsistencies of the prisoner's statements, and upon the improbability of the deceased having destroyed herself, there being no trace of the purchase of the poison or of the vessel which contained it; while, on the other hand, the prisoner would be proved to have been in possession of the very poison detected, and well acquainted with its properties. The prisoner had a right to have the benefit of any well-founded doubt, and the public had a right to expect, if the jury had no reasonable doubt, that they would protect them from crimes of this nature, so that they might sit VOL. LXXXVII.

down to their daily meals in peace and safety.

Mary Ann Ashley detailed the circumstances above stated as to the death of Sarah Hart, and the behaviour of the prisoner. On her cross-examination by Mr. Kelly, she said that she had never seen the prisoner before the day in question. Before she heard the stifled scream, she had heard the deceased's voice in rather a loud tone, but did not hear enough to make her think they were quarrelling. Sarah Hart was not hysterical or violent. Witness believed the deceased was dead before she was bled by the surgeon. She was aware that the deceased had received a present of a box of apples some time before her death. Her two children were in bed at the time of her death. The eldest, a boy, is nearly five years old.

Mrs. Barret, a neighbour, who had been called in by Mrs. Ashley, corroborated her account of the state in which the deceased was found.

A number of witnesses deposed to the prisoner's leaving and returning to the Jerusalem Coffee House; his railway journey to Slough and back to London; his being set down at Herschel House; and the other circumstances above stated, down to his being placed in the custody of Perkins, the Eton police officer; and Perkins gave an account of the statement which had been made to him by the prisoner.

Henry William Champneys, surgeon, deposed to his being called in to see the deceased; the examination of the body, the analysis of the contents of the stomach, and the discovery of the prussic acid. He described the effects of prussic acid on the animal system in the same manner as stated by the counsel for the prosecution. 2 B