The Sun.
London, England, 1863-08-17 00:00:00

MURDER IN WOLVERHAMPTON.

In Bilston-street, Wolverhampton, there is a
wide court known as No. 4 Court, or the " bar-
racks," in which are about eight houses on either
side tenanted at 2s. 3d. a week. In one of these
there came to live some five weeks since a young
man and woman, who seemed to obtain a liveli-
, hood by making and vending skewers of iron wire.
The woman appeared to be most active in the
calling, but she never made herself very sociable
with her neighbours, and was observed to be very
careful, when she desired only to go to the other
end of the court, to lock her door. On the evening
of Monday, now nearly a month ago, the woman
locked the house door, and told a next door neigh.
bour that she was going out, and if any one called
they were to be told that she was gone into the
country. A few days after her departure a re-
spectable-looking woman came from Willenhall, a
neighbouring township, and inquired for Mr. Wil-
liamson, her son, who was alleged to be the tenant
of the house, and who had passed for the husband
of the woman referred to. The message left by the
woman was delivered, and old Mrs. Williamaon's
desired that her son should be told to write to his
mother, as she wished to hear from him. Whether
or not the woman who made the inquiries was the
person she alleged herself to be has not yet tran-
spired. Since that time the shutters of the front
room of the house on the ground floor remained
closed, and the window of the front room upstairs
has been darkened by a thin muslin curtain and a
coarse petticoat. Very offensive odours have for
several days past annoyed the tenants right and
left of the closed house—bat this was in each case
attributed to some local cause in the respective
houses arising oat of domestic arrangements, and
little suspicion seems to have been excited that the
cause was in the house which lay between the two
in which the annoyance was most experienced. The
landlord called for his rent, but notwithstanding
the long absence of his tenants did not take steps
to enter the house, believing from the appearance
of the woman (to whom, and not the man,
he let the house) that his tenants were
respectable people for their sphere, and that
they would be home after harvest time. Yesterday
morning, however, the neighbour with whom the
message had been delivered by the woman tenant
became uncomfortably inquisitive, and expressing
a wish to a neighbour named Mary Lee that she
should like to know what furniture was left in the
house, Lee procured a key and opened the door.
On entering, a strong stench seemed stirred by the
air. Accompanied by a neighbour, another woman
named Smith, she went upstairs. There the stench
became so strong that she exclaimed, " There is
some one dead in this house." Proceeding a step or
two further, she saw in the front room that which
made her call out, " Good God! come and see what-
ever it is." Mrs. Smith ran up stairs, but to do so
it required great moral courage on her part, so ex-
ceedingly offensive was the effluvium. On the floor
of the room lay a mattress, and upon it there was
stretched, covered over with a sheet and coverlet,
what was evidently the corpse of an adult human
being, Mrs. Lees, approaching to the foot of the
bed, pulled off with some difficulty the quilt and
sheet, for a portion of them was wrapped round and
tucked under the head of the corpse. When the
coverlet was drawn off, a scene indescribably repul-
sive lay before the searchers. On the mattress lay
the blackened and decomposed body of a man
literally swarming with and partially eaten by
maggots. The body was blackened, not with decay
alone, and the sheets and mattress was discoloured,
not simply by the progress of decomposition, but by
what appeared to be hot gas tar poured upon it
during life. With this, upon the sheets, upon the
mattress, and upon the floor around, blood was in-
termixed, and it was also found apart from the tar. '
_ _

One eye had been gouged out, and it lay upon the
cheek, only slightly connected with its former posi-
tion. The nose was broken, the jaw was supposed
to be broken, one lip was cut, a thumb was broken,
and there seemed to be an incised wound on the
thigh and upon another portion of the body near to
that limb. The murdered man wore, as he lay in bed,
only a shirt and waistcoat; and there is no doubt
that some hand must have tended him after he was
unable to do anything for himself. This is clear

from the manner in which his head was covered
with the bedclothes. These were fastened over the
face, tight enough to secure suffocation if death had
not previously taken place. To remove this cover-
ing so much force had to be applied by the woman
Lee that when the coverlet came off the face and
head, the hair of the corpse came away with it; and
its colour convinced the woman that the deceased
was the young man Williamson, who had passed
for the husband of the woman who lived with him,
but who left the house on the occasion and under
circumstances already described, and who had not
since been seen.

At the inquest which was hold before the inquiry
commenced a woman present volunteered a state-

ment to the effect, that some time since she had
known the deceased by the name of Bill, and she
now remembered the name to be WilliamWilliame.

She was able to identify him by his trouseas, which
on one occasion she had mended. His mother lived
at Portobello, a small town near Wolverhampton.

A letter addressed to him had once been left at her
house, and she had known him when he lived in
Birmingham. He was not married, but he lived
with a woman known by the name of Rose. This
woman she had not seen for more than three weeks,
" but," she added, " she knows all about it. She is
a bad, good-for-nothing."
Mary Lee, the woman who first found the body,
was examined and said—l last saw Williams alive
on Monday three weeks at the bottom of the court,
and he then appeared to be in good health. On the

evening of the same day I saw a woman with whom
he lived go to the tap at the back of the building

for some water. After filling her kettle she returned
to the house, and I have not seen her since. The

witness then stated what the woman had said before

going to the country, and the manner in which the

body had been discovered.
Other evidence in corroboration of the above
statement having been given, the inquiry was ad-
journed until the last day of this month. Dr.
Gibbons, the surgeon, in the meantime, was in•

strutted to make a careful post-mortem examination
of the body.

NEW HOPS.—The first pocket of new hops of the
growth of 1863, arrived in the Borough on Saturday morn.
ing, from Mr. Thos. Manwaring, Brenchley, consigned to
William Austen and Co. It was sold to Messrs. R. and
T. Collis, and by them resold to Messrs. H. Boddington
and Co., brewers, Manchester. They were fine in colour,
healthy, and well managed, and known as the ,Earl;
Brenchley Prolifics.