The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-04-01 00:00:00

THE iIND OF A TERRIBLE ICALIAN
BRIGAND.

A letter from Area.° furnish° us with the following wail.
huhufl of the capture aud death of the redoubted bilgaud
tinieche

Information having been received by the police that
Gnicche was accustomed to refresh his inward man at
a certain farmhouse situated in a place called the
Tegoleto (a term nearly equivalent to a brickfield),
three carabineers were sent to the soot, which they
reached about ten o'clock in the 'evening.
Leaving his comrades outside the chief of the party
entered the house, where he found the cloth laid for
supper, and the master standing before the fire, dili-
gently occupied with the concoction of a savoury dish
of pork, liver, and onions. At the sight of the officer
the man turned pale, and at theimminent risk of spoiling
his fry began to edge towards the dour, but the carts-
bineer quietly showing his revolver, told him that if
he stirred it would be at the peril of his life. In a few
minutes more two ladies appeared upon the scene, the
wife and the daughter of the man whose tranquil
culinary operation had been so unpleasantly inter.
tupted. The argument of the revolver was repeated,
and a 'meg and painful pause ensued.

At last the silence was broken by the elder of the
ladies, who, on a plea of urgent necessity, begged to be
excused for a few moments. The carabineer, like a
well-bred Italian, was ready with his "Attends pure,"
but for all that his ungallant curiosity speedily brought
him unobserved in the wake of the retiring dame,
whose urgent necessitysserned to have been aggravated,
on exposure to the night air, by an obstinate cough.
The wary functionary took his stand behind a hay-
stack, and watched for what might turn up. A return
of the old lady's troublesome cough was answered by a
sbrill whistle from behind the hedge,. and in an instant
the terrible Gnicche was by her side. But at the
very same moment the carabineer rushed forth from
his place of concealment, closed with the robber, and
threw him heavily to the ground. Gnieche bawled
for help, and his assailant, in his attempt to stifle
the cries of the ruffian, for he feared that others of
the gang might be within hearing, lost a finger
joint, which was bitten off by Gnicche in the struggle.
Phil brave carabineer did not, however, loosen his
grasp, and with the assistance of his two companions,
who had now come to the rescue, Gnicche was
handcuffed, and carried off in the direction of the Badia
al lino, the nearest police-station. But at a certain
point of the journey, at the borders of a convenient
thicket, the muscular bandit, summoning all his
strength for a last desperate effort, shook off his cap.
tors, and with a prodigious yell, flung himself into a
narrow defile lying a few feet beneath the road, and
ran for his life towards the wood. Three shots were
sent aftei him, and one brought him to the ground a
corpse. The body was brought to the Badia, where it
was visited on the following day with a mixture of
admiration and terror by thousands of peasants, who
could hardly bring themselves to believe that the life-
less form before them was that of the man whose name
they had been wont to pronounce with a feeling of
mysterious awe, heightened by the remembrance of
his long career of impunity in crime.

GnicChe, whose real name was Bobini, had for years
infested the neighbouring provinces, formerly coin-
drised in the Papal States, and it was an evil hour for
him when he first resolved to extend his operatione be-
yond the Tuscan frontier. Gnicche was a stout, well-
built fellow, uniting all the physical and moral requi-
sites for the business he had chosen—to wit, strength,
courage, cunning, and an utter indifference to the
means employed for the attainment of whatever end
he had in view.