The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1862-07-08 00:00:00

THE MCRDER AT FORDINGBRIDGE.

Nothing could be more awful and revolting
than the circumstances connected with the recent

tragedy at Fordingbridge. The mind of civilized
man must recoil with horror from the spectacle
of a secret and brutal murderer lying in ambush
like a wild beast to pounce upon its prey, violet-
. . .

ing every maxim of religion, insulting every
instinct of our common nature—not only taking
away the life of the innocent, but doing the deed
with such accompaniments of cruelty and ferocity
as are scarcely to be found in the annals of the
darkest ages, and of the most barbarous nations.
We have been shocked of late by the dreadful
agrarian murders in Ireland ; by the romantic
and extraordinary tragedies in Manchester, in
which three children and a solicitor were sacri-
ficed; by the destruction of two children in
Ludgate-hill with a virulent poison administered
by their own mother, who also attempted her own
life ; and more recently by the savage butchery
of a gipay woman by her husband near Ports-
mouth, and the shooting of policeman
Jump, at Ashton-under-Lyne, by a band of
masked ruffians. But fearful as these tragedies
are, not one of them exceeds in diabolical
atrocity and brutal and unscrupulous villainy the
murder of Miss Mary Ann Susan Hall, at For-
dingbridge, a fortnight since. On Sunday morn-
ing, the 22nd June, Miss Hall rose in her usual
health and spirits, breakfasted with her father,
dressed for the purpose of Divine service, set
I out about ten o'clock with her parasol and books
of devotion in her hand, with the intention, as
I was her wonted custom, of worshipping God in
1 the parish church at Fordinghridge. After leav-
ing the homestead of her father in all the fresh-
ness and beauty in the morning of her life, she
was never again seen alive afterwards save by
her murderer. A few hours later and her body
was found in an old roadway or ditch. She had
been strangled or smothered in the thick muddy
I water of the gully, her face beameared with
muddly slime, and her mouth, nostrils, and ears
filled with mud. There were traces of great
violence being used towards her. Her bonnet
was flattened and torn, and her dress, also torn,
was covered with mud and drenched with wet.
From the footmarks left it is supposed that the
villain waited for his victim crouched behind Cr.
ash tree, and that while she was attempting to
get over one of the stiles at the "gully' he
Jumped out from his hiding place, seized her,
and she fell. A violent struggle ensued, and a
pace or two below there were marks where a
person had evidently been pushed backward into
the nettles and brambles growing on the bank.
There was &mai blood upon the grass, which has
been discovered to be human blood. From this
place to that where the body was found the twigs
and rushes and bent grass showed the direction
in which she had been savagely and barbarously
dragged. This mint have taken place within a
quarter of an hour after ten o'clock ; and some
six hours after she had quitted her father's roof
a bright and beautiful girl, only twenty-three
years of age, she was carried back on a hurdle,
her features almost unrecognisable by her
acquaintances—a mangled, blackened, and muddy
corpse!
No one can read the evidence given before the
magistrates, a report of which we publish to-day,
but must say that the author of so brutal an out-
rage, perpetrated on a Sunday morning while
the bells were tolling for church, almost in a
public footpath, where people were constantly
passing, could have been none other than a
hardened villain. But few even of such as have
been deeply steeped in crime would be supposed
capable of such a deed as this. The person to
whom suspicion seems to have been immediately
attached is a man named John Jacob Gilbert.
The antecedents of this man are by no means of
a very flattering kind. Although only about
thirty-four years of age, he has been imprisoned
several times for night poaching and other minor
offences. Some years ago he PIM sentenced to
seven years transportation for breaking into the
house of a relative—Mr. Simon Gilbert, a
Frogham. He served three years and nine
months, and like hundreds of other villains was
set at liberty on a ticket of leave. Subsequently
he was charged with attempting to commit a
capital assault in the New Forest, on a woman
named Viney, of Gorley, and robbing her of 2s.
The case was tried at Winchester, but the prose-
cution for the assault broke down, and he was
sentenced to four years' penal servitude for the
highway robbery only, the whole of which time
he served. The circumstances connecting him
with the present diabolical act are briefly as
follows :—A young man named Turner, who
seems to have frequently associated with him,
and who gave his evidence in a very straightfor-
ward manner, states that on a Sunday morning,
five weeks ago, he was with Gilbert, and they
saw Miss Hall going along the footpath towards
Fordingbridge church, when Gilbert made a
remark which shows that long before the murder
be contemplated a criminal assault on Mies
Hall. A fortnight afterwards they were again
walking together, and again saw Miss Hall come
along on her way towards Fordingbridge church,
when Gilbert a second time made use of an ex-
pression respecting the young woman. Of course

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