difficult to distinguish on which an approaching train is
travelling until it is close at hand, and they think that
some distinctive mark should be adopted by their
respective companies, so that their engines should be
immediately recognised both by day and night; and the
jury beg especially to call the attention of the railway
directors and the legislature to the paramount
importance of some means of communication being
established between the guard and the engine driver."
The Coroner immediately ordered Kinch to be taken
into custody.

Two fatal Colliery Accidents have taken place. The
first occurred on the 14th at the new Cottam coalpit
belonging to Messrs. Appleby, of the Renishaw
ironworks, near Sheffield. At seven o'clock in the morning
a party of seven miners prepared to descend
the shaft in order to commence their day's work;
they had not descended more than fifteen or
twenty feet when the corf in which they were
standing became detached from the wire rope, and
all the men fell headlong to the bottom of the shaft.
Their names were John and Charles Greaves, of
Barlborough; John Barton, Robert Robinson, and
Thomas Waterhouse, of Stavely; Richard Bright, and
John Naylor. The cause of the disaster was the
snapping of an iron ring that connected the wire rope
with the chain in which the corf rested. All the
seven men were found to be killed with the exception
of Barton, who once or twice exhibited some slight
symptoms ot animation. The calamity has occasioned
a profound sensation for some miles around the scene
of the occurrence. The second accident took place on
the 21st at the Charlwood Colliery, Mangotsfield, near
Bristol. The ascent and descent of the shaft is made by
means of a cart of wood capable of holding four persons,
which is worked by means of a drawing engine, and
is steadied in its progress by a guide on either side
of the shaft. At 10 o'clock at night the usual time for
the night-men to descend to their labour; three men,
named Samuel Bennett, aged 33; Samuel Bryant, aged
38; Isaac James, aged 32; and a boy named Gingzell,
aged 16, got into the cart, and having given the usual
signal, the engineman began to lower them down the
shaft. After they had proceeded about thirty yards,
the engine by some means, either the breaking of some
teeth in the cogwheel, an insufficient supply of steam or
some other cause, suddenly lost its control of the cart,
which immediately ran down at a tremendous rate to
the bottom of the shaft—a depth, in all, of some 230 or
240 yards. It was not till three in the morning that the
poor people could be extricated. They were alive, but
all of them dreadfully injured, and Bennett is since
dead. An inquest has commenced, which a government
inspector of collieries is expected to attend.

A dreadful Boiler Explosion, with loss of life, took place
at the Ebley Clothing Mill, near Stroud, on the morning
of the 20th inst., about nine o'clock. The workmen and
women had been to breakfast, and were beginning to
work, when a loud explosion, followed by a crash,
which was distinctly heard in the town of Stroud,
announced a catastrophe. The engine boiler had burst,
and the building in which it was contained was found
to be almost a heap of ruins. The end of the factory
where the boiler had been placed was completely blown
out, and a wall forming the boundary of the premises
next to the canal was also thrown down, the debris
being blown into the canal. On removing the rubbish
the body of the engineer was discovered, dreadfully
mutilated and dead. Three women were also found to
have sustained serious injuries, and were removed to
Stroud Hospital, where they are now lying. It is a
most providential circumstance that the accident
happened at the moment it did, for in a quarter of an
hour after there would have been some 500 people in
the mill, and some 30 in the floor immediately over the
boiler. One boy had a very narrow escape. He acted
as stoker or attendant to the engineer, and just before
the accident had been sent by him to fetch a hammer.
He was returning with it to the building when the
explosion took place. A coroner's inquest has been
opened, but adjourned to give time for the attendance
of a government inspector.

An important Coroner's Inquest was held in the
Bethnal Green Road on the 22nd inst., on the body of a
child of three years old, who died from typhoid fever,
caused by the Noxious Exhalation of a Cesspool. The
child's mother said that her husband was a hawker of
crockeryware, and they, with three children occupied a
lower room on the ground floor. She had another
child lying ill, which the surgeon gave no hopes of.
There was an overflowing privy connected with the
house, at the back, which passed under their bed-room.
It was a cesspool, as there was no drainage to the houses.
Every morning the soil came through the flooring
boards of the room, and witness was compelled to wipe
it up. The coroner asked if any complaint had been
made to the Board of Guardians respecting the horrid
place? Mr. West (the medical officer)—”No, sir, it is
down in my last report, to come before the guardians
on Monday night next, and I have 14 more cases of a
similar kind in the same district, where the privies
were overflowing and the soil was to be seen several
inches deep in the back-yards, or gardens, adjoining the
closets. Mr. Brainbridge, the district-surveyor, said
that no complaint had ever been made to him, or he
should have immediately visited the place, and served
the owners with notices to abate the nuisance. Mr.
West, surgeon, said the deceased's death had arisen
from low typhoid, produced by the nuisance complained
of. The Coroner said that he trusted the authorities
would pay immediate attention to the case, or the
consequences would be very serious. The summoning
officer said, that the vestry clerk had directed him to
state that a deputation had waited upon the
Commissioners of Sewers a few days since, and they had
promised to assist the guardians, as soon as possible,
in improving the drainage of the parish. Other
evidence having been adduced, the jury unanimously
agreed to the following special verdict:—"That the
deceased died a natural death from typhus fever, caused
by a nuisance from a cesspool on the premises; and
we (the jurors) request the coroner to write to her
Majesty's Commissioners of Sewers to direct their
immediate attention to the erection of a sewer in
that district, as a means of relieving the place of future
dangers."

The recent executions have been followed (as has
been observed often to happen) by two cases of Hanging,
proceeding apparently from the morbid influence of
these executions on weak minds. On Sunday the 16th,
the day after the execution of James Barbour, the
inmates of the lunatic ward at the Sheffield union
workhouse conversed together for some time on the
subject of that event and the hanging of Alfred
Waddington. Among them was a person named George
Palfrey, a white-metal smith, and who has been in the
lunatic asylum at Wakefied, and in the retreat-ward
at Sheffield, for about 30 years. He was in such a
stage of convalescence that he was intrusted with the
care of a patient who required frequent attention.
His imagination appears to have been inflamed by the
exciting conversation, and such was its effect upon him
that during Sunday night he slipped out of the retreat-
ward, and, having attached his neckerchief to a beam in
the privy, he placed his neck within the sling, and,
throwing himself off a slight elevation upon which he
was standing, hung suspended, with his feet just clear
of the floor, until life was extinct. In that posture the
dead body was found at an early hour on Monday
morning.—The other instance is still more singular. A
boy of the age of 14, of the name of John Auty, son of
a mason, who keeps a beerhouse in Sheffield, was found
hanged in a garret in his father's house. He kept
pigeons in the garret, and he had been robbed of two
or three of them by a cat, which gained admission to
the garret through a broken pane. The boy had been
heard to vow vengeance on the cat, and it appeared
that he had set about preparing a noose to fix within
the broken pane, with the intention of catching the |
animal by the neck and causing it to effect its own
strangulation. At night he was missing; and, after a
search, his body was found in the garret, hanging from
the ceiling. He was hanging by a piece of thick whip-
cord attached to a nail in the middle of a joist. His
neck was not in a noose, but in a sling with a large
knot at the end; his body was resting on the floor and