for two years. They heard the sentence without
apparent emotion.

Three boys, the eldest fourteen, and the youngest nine
years old, were charged on the 7th, at the Southwark
Police Court, with attempting to pick the pockets of
several persons in the gallery of the Victoria Theatre.
The officer who took them described their great expertness,
and said he had ascertained that they had all been
brought up in the "Thieves' Kitchen," in a court in
Gray's Inn-lane, where they were taught the art and
mystery of picking pockets. The Magistrate said he
had no doubt they were expert young thieves, but he
thought that the youngest lad had been led away by the
others, and he should discharge him, and send an officer
with him home to his parents. The other prisoners
were committed for a month to the Brixton House of
Correction.

A most horrible Murder has been perpetrated at
Nempnett, near Bristol. For many years past the
village shop at Nempnett has been kept by an aged
couple, named William and Sarah Wilkins. On Saturday
morning, the 8th inst., two men, one named Wiles,
a blacksmith, who has recently worked in the village,
and the other named Smith, a labourer, called at the
shop, and Wiles asked for a loaf of bread. Mrs.
Wilkins was in the act of reaching it for him, when the
ruffian struck her a violent blow on the head with a
thick stick which he had taken into the shop with him.
The poor old woman immediately fell to the earth
insensible. Wiles then rushed at the husband, who was
eating his breakfast in a settle at the upper end of the
shop, and dealt him several heavy blows with the same
weapon, and beat him with it on the head, then with a
spade that was lying near, until life appeared to be
extinct. Smith all the time stood at the door, for the
purpose, it is supposed, of giving the alarm should any
person approach the spot. Wiles proceeded to plunder
his victims, and from the pocket of the old woman he
took eight shillings in silver, a half-crown piece, and a
knife. It appears that they were then disturbed, as the
only further depredation they committed before making
off was to take a few papers of tobacco and a loaf of
bread from the shop. Some neighbours entering about
half an hour afterwards found the old couple lying
weltering in their blood, and the place in confusion
An outcry was of course instantly raised, and a messenger
despatched for medical assistance. The old man's
skull was fractured, and his body covered with bruises
and wounds, and the injuries his wife had sustained
were nearly equal in their extent and character. The
former died about ten o'clock the same evening, but
Mrs. Wilkins recovered sufficiently to give her evidence.
The two men were apprehended at Blagdon, with some
of the property in their pockets. Smith made a
confession, and the prisoners were committed for trial at
the assizes.

On the night of Sunday, the 9th, a man named
Stevens died in a cell at the Police Station in Vine
Street. He had been seen in the Quadrant, and it was
supposed he had been drinking, as, after inquiring for
an omnibus, he fell down insensible, and was carried by
the police on a stretcher to the station, where he was
laid on his side on the floor of the cell. About one in
the morning, he got worse, and Mr. Tothill, the
surgeon, was sent for, but before he arrived the man was
dead. At the inquest, on the body, the Coroner asked
the inspector who took the charge whether he was not
aware that there was a positive order of the
commissioners, that persons taken to the station-house in a
state of insensibility should immediately have the
attendance of a medical man? The inspector replied
that he knew of none such. The surgeon, on being
appealed to, said there was such an order. The Coroner:
Then here is an inspector of police who docs not know
what his orders are. A juror: Was it not very
improper to lay him on the floor with nothing under his
head? The surgeon: Certainly it was. The jury
returned a verdict that "the deceased died of apoplexy,
but they knew not what caused it; and that the police
had been guilty of great neglect in not getting medical
assistance."

William Smyth, a surgeon, in good practice, residing
in Vauxhall Walk, was charged on the 10th, at
Lambeth Police Court, with an Assault on Mary Ann Hall,
a girl thirteen years of age. The evidence disclosed
scenes of the most disgusting profligacy. It appeared
that the prisoner, who is a married man and nearly
60 years of age, but separated from his wife, had in his
confidence two strumpets, whom he induced to invite to
his house a number of girls whose ages ranged from
sixteen to eighteen years. Once within his reach, the
prisoner commenced by plying his victims with spirits
or wine; and the names of seven or eight were
mentioned whom he thus succeeded to ruin. The magistrate
exclaimed, that in the whole course of many years'
experience it had not been his misfortune to hear
disclosed such a scene of abominable profligacy, which
made one doubt whether we lived in a civilised or
barbarous state of society. An application to be admitted
to bail was indignantly refused.

The case of the Birds, convicted at the Exeter Assizes
of Assaults on the girl Parsons which caused her death,
was decided on the 12th, by fourteen of the fifteen
Judges in the Exchequer Chamber. The Court was
nearly equally divided, the numbers being eight against
six. The larger number have determined that the
Birds could not have been convicted at the first trial of
the assaults proved against them at the second; that
they have not therefore been twice "in peril" on the
same charge; and that the conviction in the second trial
must stand good. Sentence will be passed on them at
the next assizes. The eight Judges who formed the
majority were, Justices Williams, Wightman, Coleridge,
and Patteson, of the Queen's Bench, Justices Erle,
Talfourd, and Cresswell of the Common Pleas, and
Chief Baron Pollock; the minority of six were, Mr.
Justice Maule of the Common Pleas, Barons Parke,
Alderson, and Martin, Chief Justice Jervis of the
Common Pleas, and the Lord Chief Justice Campbell.
The Judges gave their opinions individually. Lord
Campbell declared, that though he readily yielded to
the opinions of the majority, he could extract from those
opinions no certain rule for the future; and he feared
that without the intervention of Parliament, "notwithstanding
our best efforts to be unanimous, we ourselves,
as well as others, may again find it difficult to anticipate
the result of our deliberations." He therefore hoped
that the legislature would speedily repeal or explain
the enactment which had caused such confusion.

A striking instance of the efficiency of the Detective
Police occurred on the 12th, in the capture of a man
charged with the commission of a desperate murder at
Warrington, in Lancashire, a short time since. The
prisoner is an Irishman, named Lyons, and after his
commission of the crime with which he stands charged,
information was forwarded to the Dublin police-officers,
by some of whom the fellow was known, to the effect
that he had enlisted into the service of the East India
Company. One of the Dublin officers, named Kavanagh,
was immediately set upon his track, and soon traced
him to London, where he ascertained that he had
arrived by the mail train at four o'clock on the above
morning. Kavanagh at once communicated with Mr.
Mayne, the chief commissioner, who immediately
directed inspector Field, of the Detective Force, to assist
the Dublin officer. Mr. Field, with serjeant Thornton,
of the Detectives, soon traced the prisoner to a public-
house in Charles-street, Westminster, where the officers
succeeded in apprehending him just as he was sitting
down to dinner. He was sent down to Warrington
in custody of Kavanagh, the Dublin officer. He
would have been sent to Worley barracks the same day
preparatory to his embarkation for the East Indies,
had not the officers succeeded in effecting his
apprehension.

Jane Wilbred, the victim of the cruelty of the
Shanes, has been admitted into the Metropolitan
Convalescent Institution, Sackville-street, whose object is
to afford a short change of air to poor persons who
cannot be restored without it. She is now in the
institution's asylum at Carshalton, with every prospect that
in a short time she will be completely restored and fit
for service.

A case, curiously illustrative of The Profits of
Mendicancy, has occurred at the Isle of Wight Borough
Court. A vagrant, named David Brooks, pretending to