the late William Busfield, Esq. Mr. Millegan was the
only candidate, all his opponents having retired from
the field. He was the first Mayor of Bradford, is one
of the leading merchants of the borough, and has
rendered essential service to the cause of free trade.

NARRATIVE OF LAW AND CRIME.

A singular case of Innocence under Suspicious
Circumstances occurred at Bow Street on the 30th ult.
Levi Langley, a youth employed at the White Hart
public house in Long-Acre, was charged with stealing
£32 from the landlord. Mr. Williamson, the landlord,
had secreted the money (consisting of two cheques, a £5
note, and four sovereigns) upon a shelf in his wine-
cellar, where it was placed in a bag behind some bottles.
One day the bag was missing, and as no one had access
to the key of the cellar, except the boy Langley, he was
at once suspected, and given into custody. He was
examined at Bow Street, and it was suggested that he
must have watched his master at the time he was secreting
the money, as in no other way could the robbery
be accounted for. The prisoner persisted in his entire
innocence of the charge, but he was remanded. In the
mean time sergeant Thomson, one of the most useful
officers in the F. division, was employed to investigate
the matter. Having been directed to the spot where
the money was deposited, he commenced searching the
shelves and binns in that portion of the cellar, and soon
discovered traces of the bag and cheques, which had
been dragged away, and mangled by the rats. Some of
the fragments had been scattered about, and a sovereign
had been carried to a considerable distance; but the
whole of the property was fortunately discovered. Of
course the poor lad was immediately discharged.

Margaret Willis and Eleanor Shannon, two women of
notorious character, were charged at the Worship Street
police court on the 30th of September, with Decoying
Three Boys into a House of III Fame for the Purpose
of Robbery. William Miles, a boy of 13 years of age,
the son of a mechanic at Mile-end, stated, that while
passing through Brick Lane, Spitalfields, on the
preceding evening, in the company of two other boys of
much the same age, they were stopped by the women at
the bar, who addressed them in disgusting language and
tried to induce them to accompany them home to their
lodgings. They all of them refused to do so, and were
hurrying away to escape from them, when the woman
Willis suddenly snatched his cap off his head and ran
with it into one of the houses in an adjoining court. He
followed her into the passage, and entreated her to
return him his cap, and she promised that she would do
so if his two friends came and asked her for it also. He
accordingly returned to the other boys and persuaded
them to go with him, and all of them went into one
of the parlours, which Willis had entered; but the
moment they got into the room, she locked the
door, and then turning sharply upon them, exclaimed,
"Now, if you don't show me all the money you've
got, you don't go safe out of this place." They were
all very much frightened, and the witness pulled out of
his pocket all the money he had, consisting only of
sixpence in silver and some halfpence, and the instant the
woman saw it she seized him by the arm and violently
forced it out of his hand. She then robbed the second
boy of all the money he had in a similar manner, but,
on finding that she could not get any money from the
third youth, as he had no money about him, she grasped
hold of the poker, and, opening the room door, told
them that unless they instantly left the house and went
quietly out of the neighbourhood it would be the worse
for them, as she would dash their brains out. They
were too glad of the chance of escape to make any
disturbance, and all three hurried out of the house together;
but, on turning into a neighbouring street, encountered
a policeman, to whom they related the way in which
they had been robbed, and, the officer having gone back
with them to the house, took into custody both prisoners,
whom witness at once pointed out to him. The other
boys made a similar statement, and their evidence was
confirmed by the policeman. The magistrate committed
the woman Willis, but discharged Shannon, who
appeared to have taken no active part in the assault on
the boys.

The Rev. Francis Darry, a Roman Catholic priest, has
been brought before a bench of Hampshire Magistrates at
Cowes, charged with a brutal Assault on a Child Five
Years Old. The little girl, who gave her evidence with
remarkable clearness and ingenuousness, stated that she
was sitting on a bank when the rev. gentleman passed
by her, accompanied by a little boy, and that, after
having proceeded a few yards, he returned, and having
knocked off her bonnet, he seized her by her hair, and
beat her with great violence about her head and face.
Several witnesses who were in the neighbourhood, and
saw the outrage perpetrated, spoke of the brutality with
which the rev. defendant treated the child. Several
questions were put to the witnesses by the priest, but he
failed to shake their testimony, while, with respect to
many of the questions put to the child herself, the
magistrates decided that they were of a highly improper
character, and refused to allow her to answer them. In
answer to the charge the priest said that whenever he
walked about, the boys and girls of the neighbourhood
made fun of him, and he adopted that course of punishment
in order that it might act as an example and
make the children behave better in future. The bench
commented with severity upon the conduct of the priest,
and fined him 12s. 6d., and 7s. 6d. for costs. The fine
was immediately paid, and the priest left the court
under a volley of hisses and groans.

A young girl named Sarah Watts has been Murdered
at Frome. On the 25th ult. she was left by her parents
in charge of their cottage. In the course of that day
her body was found, and it appeared at the inquest held
on it that she had been violated and strangled. A
verdict was returned that she had been murdered by some
person or persons unknown.

At the Marylebone police court, on the 30th ult., a
woman named Davis was charged with Burning her
Female Child with a red-hot Poker. As soon as the
charge was read to the prisoner she exclaimed, "I did
it in the height of passion." The child deposed that
she was eight years of age. Eight days before her sister
had given her some cocoa to drink, and because she
took it at her bidding her mother burnt her on the
lower part of her back with a red-hot poker. Afterwards
she made her put off all her clothing, and when
she was thus naked beat her with a cane and pinched
her. This was at six o'clock in the evening; at seven
she tied witness to the bed-post with a rope passed
round her waist. When witness's father, with whom
the prisoner lives unmarried, came home, the rope was
loosed and afterwards tied, so that witness had to lie on
the floor under the bed all night. In the first case her
legs and hands were tied together, in the second her
legs only. She remained tied up all the next day, being
supplied with milk and water and dry bread, and was
finally set at liberty on the third day, by the mother,
when she fled to Kew to some people who had formerly
shown her kindness. This evidence was confirmed, and
on a subsequent examination the unnatural mother was
committed for trial.

At the Guildhall police office, on the 1st inst., Mr. J.
E. Evans, a bookseller and stationer of Snow Hill, was
fined £5 for Sending a parcel containing two boxes of
Lucifer Matches by the Great Western Railway. The
presence of the combustibles in the luggage train was
only ascertained by one of the men perceiving a little
smoke issuing from one of the carriages, and on opening
it and removing a great number of packages, the parcel
in question was drawn forth, and the matches found to
have ignited.

An extraordinary Murder has been perpetrated at a
lone cottage in the parish of Gayton-le-Marsh in
Lincolnshire. On the 3rd inst., a man who was passing
some distance from the cottage, heard a gun discharged;
and presently Baker, the cottager, ran bleeding from his
house, and exclaimed that his wife had been killed and
himself wounded by a gun, through the window. The
woman was indeed dead; but on a surgeon examining
Baker's head no shots could be found in the wounds.
The Bakers had not been on very good terms together,
and latterly the husband had with difficulty induced his