The Sun.
London, England, 1862-11-29 00:00:00

extreme penalty of Penal Servitude for Life ! Sen-
tencing these detestable ruffians to the milder
punishment—milder only by comparison—to the
intrinsically frightful punishments of ten or even
twenty years' penal servitude ! Upon ROBERTS,
said his Lordship, in the flagrant instance already
particularised, his (RoBERTs') case not being quite
so bad as that of the ruffian ANDERSON, the sen-
tence would be one of twenty years' penal servi-
tude. Again, in the cases of MOWATT and ALLEN,
the Judge thus discriminated between the guilty
pair. " MOWATT," he said, " had been before sen-
tenced to six years' penal servitude, but he sup-
posed for some sort of good behaviour he obtained
his liberty in four years and a half, when he ap-
peared to have resumed his old courses ; and at the
time he was taken into custody there were found
under his bed a jemmy, a life preserver, and a quantity
of skeleton keys. It was manifest he was a sort ofper-
son who must be kept out of the way of harming the
public for some time, and the sentence upon him
would be one of penal servitude for twenty years.
With regard to ALLEN, it appeared that this was
the only time that he had been convicted, and he
should, therefore, sentence him to penal servitude
for ten years only !" So with the others—the irony
being in each instance so poignant of its kind and
so instantly recognisable that it must have pene-
L trated even to the apprehension of these hardened
and brutalized offenders. "It might perhaps be
thought,'' observed the learned Baron, towards the
close of his last award of punishment, " that this
was too light a punishment ; but it should be kept
in mind that courts of justice always desired to
give young men an opportunity of retrieving their
character. He would, however, assure those who
might be inclined to repeat the offence, that if the
law as it stood at present and the sentences now
awarded were not found sufficient to protect iho
public from such outrages, some revision of the law
would certainly take place, and alterations be made
in the punishment with a yieto to produce that
effect." Now, all this is but the first taste by the
garotters of the return blow for the thud of the
knuckle-duster and the swoop of the loaded
bludgeon. If Sir GEORGE GREY can find
it in his heart to deal so leniently with
the brawny assassins now haunting our streets,
that he may be virtually said to have put on the
gloves, and delivered a feeble padded blow or two by
way of retaliation—Baron BRAMWELL has shown
himself quite equal to the occasion, delivering to
one and all of the Eighteen Garrotters just brought
up before him for punishment, as effective and
eminently judicious a knockdown blow as ever was
found to be TOM SAYERS'S celebrated Auctioneer !

We have received from the Vestry of St. George
the Martyr, Southwark, a copy of the Report of
their Sanitary Committee, to whom the subject

was referred, on the Removal of St. Thomas's Hos-
pital," the House of the Poor, in Southwark."
With much pleasure we invite the attention of all
who are interested is the subject to its contents.
The matter ought not to ba lost sight of till the
public is fully assured that its real interests will
triumph over the strange crotchet, to bestow upon it
the mildest name, which has taken possession of the
minds of the grand committee, and, above all, of
those of the treasurer, his three sons, and his

nephew, the incumbent of an hospital living.
The main points are already well before the
public; we are only anxious that it should not
forget the importance of energetic action in refe-
rence to them. The vestries and boards of guar-
dians south of the Thames are bodies altogether
independent of each other, and possess no means of
organised action. There seems, moreover, hitherto
to have been a prevalent opinion that the governors
could never really think of anything so preposte-
rous as really moving the hospital from its present
general locality. The mistake of the latter suppo-
sition is now but too obvious. The necessary
r thing, therefore, is to remedy the want of

means of co-operation between the parishes, and

to bring out what is sure to be the universal opi-
nion among a population as that on the south side
of the Thames. No time ought to be lost by public
spirited men in all the parishes, for by far the
pleasantest way, as well as the least expensive and
and efficient, woald be to display so clearly the
sentiments of the parties most concerned as to pre-
vent any further attempts to perpetuate an hospital
job. We heartily concur with the following simple
statement of what the vestry deems desirable :
"The committee is of opinion that the new hospital
should be established within a circle of one mile radius from
the Elephant and Castle Inn, Newington, the centre of a
population of about 500,000 people, chiefly hardworking
people; and considers that no sufficient reason has yet been
shown against this opinion."