The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-04-18 00:00:00

PENAL SERVITUDE FOR LIFE.

At the Central Criminal Court, Collin Kelly, about 60
years Of age, has been indicted for wounding William Henry
Davis, with intent to murder him.—Mr. Moody conducted
the prosecution; the prisoner defended himself.

It appeared that the prisoner is a brother of Mr.
Henry. Kelly, a surveyor in Kentish-town, and had for
years harboured an insatiable grudge against him and
hisffamily, leading the prisoner into the commission of
many ads of violence, resulting at length in his im-
prisonment, and driving his brother to change his resi-
dence to another part of London, at 'great personal
inconvenience. The evidence went to show that on the
evening of the 21st of February last Mrs. Kelly, wife of
Mr. H. Kelly, was in her kitchen with her 'daughter
and her baby. Sonic adjoining leads commanded a
view of tke kitchen window. While there she heard
the report of a pistol, and saw a flash of fire on the
leads. She ran out for assistance, taking two of her
children with her. As she was going she heard the
glass of a door leading from the leads to the house.
breaking and falling. She met her husband, and they
got assistance and went back, some of the children
having been left in the house. When they returned
the passage was full of policemen. The prisoner had
been threatening them about nine or ten years before,
and used to conic and break in the door and demand
money. They had at length to apply to a magistrate.
The prisoner was then bound over to keep the peace,
and when he came out of prison they had to sleep in
the next house, and to obtain the protection of
William Henry Davis at night, her husband being
partly paralyzed. She had never had any quarrel
with the prisoner. After the alarm which his conduct
had occasioned them on the night in question, the
prisoner was found at the entrance to the draw- '
ing-room with an open knife in his right
hand and a pistol in the other, facing the stairs.
The prosecutor Davis had gone into the house to
the assistance of the family, and he as was proceeding
upstairs the prisoner struck him with the knife over the
balustrade, first on the lower part of the left arm, and
then on the neck. Davis seized the prisoner by the
throat on the landing. A policeman came to his ak
sistance, and, striking the prisoner with a poker, dis-
armed him. About a fortnight before that Davis had
seen the prisoner at the house, and on that occasion
the prisoner told him that if anything occurred again
he should have a knife up each sleeve of his coat and
one in his pocket. The policeman who had been
called found a glass door broken, and on going up-
stairs to the floor above the drawing-room the pri-
soner told him that if he moved a step further he was
a dead man. After the prisoner had been secured he
said, "I've done it ; and you will find a pistol
in my right-hand trousers pocket." On searching
him a pistol was found there. At the police-station
an open knife—a formidable weapon—was found on
him, upon which he said, "I intended that to go in
here," pointing to the right-hand side of the neck,
"but it was too thick." He added that he went down
to the Regent's Canal to make sure that the pistol
would go off. On Mr. Rawlins, a surgeon, examining
Davis, he found on him half-a-dozen incised wounds—
two on the right arm, one a little lower down on the
same arm, one close to the collar-bone on the same
side, one on the top of the left shoulder, and a cut on
the left arm. He had bled very much from what ap-
peared to be the most dangerous wound.
The prisoner, in his defence, read a long, rambling,
incoherent statement, avoiding the real issue, and made
up for the most part of a recital of grievances which he
alleged he had suffered at the hands of his brother.
He called no witnesses, and said he only went to his
brother's house on the occasion to see if he could obtain
any compensation for the injuries he had received.
The jury returned a verdict of Guilty of wounding
with intent to murder. - -

Mr. Justice Brett, in passing sentence, said th
circumstances were most atrocious. The prisoner
being a man of ungovernable passion, of an envious
sulky disposition, and conceiving he had been wronged.
had made up his mind to do the greatest injury to his
brother and his family, lie had attempted to murder
his brother's wife. Seeing a light in the kitchen
window, where she and some of her childten were, he
deliberately shot at her. He then went Ito the house,
where he had no business, and, finding himself con-
fronted by a powerful man, he attacked him with a
deadly weapon, declaring he meant to kill him. He
sentenced the prisoner to penal servitude for the term
of his natural life.