The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-08-24 00:00:00

A REIIARICABLE AFFAIR.

At the Gloucester asslzas, Elias front, aged 13, has been
chsu:ge.d with the willful murder of William Nicholls on the

March.

It appeared from the opening that both the prisoner
and the boy whom be was charged with mnrdering
were inmates of the Stroud Union Workhouse, and
that the prisoner was placed somewhat in charge of
the boy .Nicholls, who was aged only eight years,
and who laboured under an infirmity which rendered
the charge of him a revolting employment. On the
day in question the boys in the workhouse, 42 in all,
were taken out for a walk by the schoolmaster to •
wood about a mile and a half trona the workhouse, and
there employed themselves in digging primrose roots.
The schoolmaster used a whistle to collect the boys,
and, having collected them, went part of the way
home before he found that he had only 41 boys with
him, and that the missing boy was Nicholls. Unavail-
ing search was made on that and for several succeed-
ing days by the workhouse authorities, assisted by the
police, when the prisoner, who had been very restless
and altered in manner since the 18th instant, made
a statement to the effect that he knew about the
matter, as a man sitting on a stile had beckoned to
them while at the wood, and had taken away the boy
Nicholls. This was only the first of • long series
of so-called confessions, all of which proved false,
nobody being ever found at the places indicated
by the prisoner at different times, as the place where
he had left him. On one occasion the prisoner said
that Nicholls had eaten poison berries, and that he (the
prisoner) had covered him with beech leaves. The body
was found in a cattle p :ol near the wood on April 7, and
on a post-mortem examination being made, it appeared
that the cause of dea h had been drowning, and that
the boiy had probably been in the water ever since
March 18. On April 9 the prisoner was brought before
the magistrate, but the case was disc barged, and on the
evening of that day he applied to the master of the
workhouse for writing paper, and he then wrote and
handed in the following extraordinary statement :

"And I told him to come along with me, and he came and
when he got there he stood up by the pound. I shoved him
into the pound and then i ran away from him and down the
waterside as fare as i could get and when the seecount wisel
blew I came up sweting and huring the other boys were
gob n home and the schoolmaster saw me coming up behind
him and lie husk me where i had been and i send down there
a little way and he seed come on, and it was Elias Hunt what
made away with W. NI:no!e and I told W. Little and G.
Bennett W. Hopkins ami I contest en Apel the 11 and they
knowd a wake bef,e. We went for a wake and that is all
the trod and nothing else but the tract and it was me that
did hit. "ELIAS HUIsT."

Upon this further confes don be was committed to
take his trial for the murder. The above facts were
proved at the trial, and some evidence of malice was
adduced by the statement of several boys, inmates of
the workhouse, who deposed to having on some occa-
sion heard the prisoner say that he thought he should
make away with the boy Nicholls.

Mr. Motteram addreesed the jury for the defence,
and

The leanied Judge, having summed up the case,
the jury Acreiteed the prisoner, who appeared perfectly
careless and unconcerned during the whole of his
triaL