The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-03-28 00:00:00

Samuel Humm, a professionelratcatcher, has been brought
up before one of the London magistrates, charged with
poaching on the preserves of the Comniisaioners of Sewers.
It was proved that he had unlawfully petted the nun-hole
of the sewer in New-street- square, had descended into he
sewer, and hint in a short time returned to the surface with
a bag containing thirty live rata! The magistrate evidently
sympathised with the poacher, and said that he thought in
extirpating rats he was doing a good deed ; lint the in-
spector of sewers, who pressed the case against him, ex-
plained that the Commissiontra did not wish ahylmily but
their own men to catch their own rats. It was finally ar-
ranged that Hamm t.hould be discharged, on promising not
to again, and the magistrate said he would use his
influence to obtain for him a rat licence to sport in future in
the sewers of the metropolis.

A meeting of the Jurisprudence Department of the Social
Science Awiociation was held on Monday night, in London,
when Mr. Hastings read a paper " On the further Amend-
ment of the Law of Evidence in Civil Cases." Mr. limtings
mid that the preamble to Lord Penman's Act of 1043, which
recited that injustice was done by the legal incapacities for
evidence, and that full information ought to be laid before
the jury concerning the matters In issue, was the enunci.
lion of a great principle not adequately carried out by the
act itself, nor even yet wholly adopted by the legislature.
Lord Brougham's Act of 1051 carried the reform further by
admitting to the witness-box the parties to a suit : but even
this meaaure had excepted actions for breach of promise of
marriage and proceedings in consequence of adultery. A
bill was about to be introduced by Mr Denman which, if
passed, would remove these remaining restrictions, and
would also abolish the rule excluding the testimony of
persons who refused to take an oath on the ground that they
could not believe in a God, or in a state of rewards and
punishments a rule which often occasioned great hardships
to third parties. If Lord Denman's preamble was sound he
could conceive no reason why any exception should be made
In the application of its principle. A discussion ensued in
which several gentlemen took part, all of whom approved
generally the principle of Mr. Penman's proposed bilL

Mr. Justice Mellor, in charging the grand jury at the
Liverpool Assizes, male some very strong and indignant
observations relative to the death of an infant, who had
been scalded to death by an imbecile nurse in the Wigan
workhouae. His lordship said that he had read the deposi-
tions with very great pain, for he found from them that the
priioner charged with the crime was an imbecile, perfectly
unfit and incompetent to have anything to do with children.
flue witness deposed that she had frequently dene the duty
which devolved upon the imbecile woman, because she
thought her entirely unfit to have the care of an infant
child. It appeared to be the practice at the Wigan work-
house that the halt, the lame, and the blind—persons in-
competent for anything—were put to tender and difficult
duties. He could not help thinking that it was a very sad
thing that the lives of the infants in the infant ward at
Wigan were entrusted, as it appeared to hint, to persons
utterly unfit and Incapable, simply because they could dis-
charge no other duty—not because they were wholly mint
for that particular duty, but because they could do nothing
else. Ile did hope that the publicity given to this case
would call some attention to the management of the Wigan
workhomie, because it was impossible that those people in
the workhouses could have the same advantages and com-
forts which were obtained by and which prevailed amongst
people in independent circumstarces. Yet because they
were children of the poor they were not to be handed over to
persona who were wholly unlit and incompetent for the
management of them.