The Sun.
London, England, 1865-09-08 00:00:00

Shocking Case of Infanticide.

Yesterdae Mr. F. S. Longhorn, the deputy coroner for
Westminster, held an inquest at St. Martin's Vestry-hall,
on the body of a female child, found in one of the drawers
in a bed-room at Charing-cross Hotel, and alleged to be
the offspring of one of the domestic servants, named Amelia
Southerwood, who is at present in the infirmary at St.
Martin's workhouse under the surveillance of the police,
and will be charged with the wilful murder of the child.
_ _

Mr. Inspector Brennan, from Bow-street, E division, was
present to watch the case for the police authorities.
The jury having been sworn, with Mr. Richard Foulkes
as foreman, the body, which had been 13 ing in the cata-
combs unde St. Martin's Church, was brought in in a shell.
Mr. M. J. Verdon, surgeon, of 4, Craven-street, Strand,
said—On Friday evening, about five, I was sent for to the
Charing-cross Hotel, to see a female whose name I do not
know, and I found her in bed in a room nearly at the top
of the house. I accused her of having had a child and
asked her where it was, but she denied having had one. I
told her she must have had a child, and it was no use her
using any deception, as it must be here. I did what was
necessary for her state, and then examined her box which
was in the room, but found no child there, and searched
the drawers in her room, but did not find any child, and
just then she called the attendant, Martha Mack, and told
her she had had a child. I put the question to her, after
she had spoken to Mack, and I asked her, " What did you
do with it ?" She pointed out to Mack a chest of drawers
belonging to another girl who slept in the room and said
she had put it there, and had put some clothes over it. I
looked there, and found the body the jury have seen. I took
up the child and examined it. It was quite dead. It appeared

to be fully matured and healthy. There was a lacerated
wound on the neck, a little above the collar-bone, about
an inch in length, and an inch and a half in depth. There
was also a darkish discoloured mark round the neck, and
at the back of it. The umbilical cord was untied. The head

appeared to be only held to the body by skin, the spine
having been apparently broken. I have made a post mor-
tem examination, and, on applying the usual tests to the
lungs, I found that the child had breathed. The soft parts
of the neck were injured and the spine dislocated. The
other organs were healthy. From the appearances I have
no hesitation in saying that the child had a separate and
independent existence. It was of full term. The lacerated
wound was caused by drawing the head against something.
The cause of death was from dislocation of the spine by
violence. After I found the body I said, " You have acted
very badly to destroy life. It is a terrible thing to take
away the life of a child." She made no reply. She was
very weak from loss of blood. The child may have died
from loss of blood.

The Foreman of the jury—Did you notice anything as
to the state of her mind ?

The Coroner—We have nothing to do with that here. If
there is any ground for such a defence it is a question for
another court.

Martha Mack deposed—l am the head chambermaid at
the Charing-cross Hotel. On Friday, about a quarter to 5,
I went up to see Amelia Southerwood, one of the house-
maids, in her room, and asked her what was the matter
with her, and she said, " I shall be better presently." I
was in the room when the doctor came the second time. I
did not then hear anything she said to the doctor. After
the doctor had been the first time I changed her clothing,
and from what I saw I sent for the doctor immediately and
he came. He accused her (Amelia Southerwood) of having
had a child, but she strongly denied having had one, but
upon my pressing her again she spoke to me. I could not
hear what she said, but she pointed to the drawers, and in
the top long drawer I found the body of the child. She
begged me to put it out of sight, and let no one see it. I
left it in the drawer till the doctor came. I asked her next
morning what she cut it with—how the throat came cut,
and she said she did not cut it with anything, but squeezed
it between the drawers ; and I then asked her whether
she put the head or the body in the drawers. She said she
put it in with the head hanging outside. I also asked her
if the child cried, and she said yes.
Mr. Verdon recalled—The way in which the last wit-
ness has described the child being put into the drawer
with its head hanging outside would correspond with the
marks on the child.

Martha Mack recalled by a juror—Southerwood has been
in the service about two months ; there was no suspicion
that she was enciente.

Thomas Cartwright, living at 54, Noble-street, St. Luke's,
who had been at work on the top of the hotel fitting some
ironwork, deposed to having witnessed the birth of the
child through a window.
Alice Freeman deposed that she had been housemaid at
the hotel about a week. On Friday she had occasion to go
into Amelia Southerwood's room in the afternoon, and see-
ing blood on the floor asked her what it was, and Souther-
wood said she thought she had broken a blood-vessel. She
seemed very bad, and witness did not think of sending for
a doctor, but she heard that others had done so.

Thomas Tabey, detective officer at the Charing-cross
Hotel, said he received the body from Martha Mack.
Inspector Brennan said that was all the evidence that
was forthcoming.
The Coroner said that it was but seldom that a case of
infanticide was clearly proved. Infanticide had risen to a
fearful height, and was still on the increase, and legislative
enactments were loudly called for.
The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against
Amelia Southerwood, and the usual warrant having been
made out, it was handed to Brennan to put in force.

FOUR MEN DROWNED IN THE THAMES.---A de-
plorable accident took place on the Thames on Wednes-
day, by which four lives were lost. It appears that about
one o'clock the Zephyr, screw steamer, bound for Rotter-
dam, was proceeding down the river, and when off Dept-
ford came into collision with a small skiff, which had nine
persons on board. The whole party were thrown into
the river, and five of them were picked up by ballast
lighters, which immediately put off to their assistance.
The other four persons were drowned.
rADVEETISEMENT.I—HoIIoway's Pills and Ointment.—
Be not Deceived.—There is a giant marching onwards
from the east who threatens to invade our prosperous
country—his name is cholera, and his cohorts consist of
impurity, irregularity, debility, and despondency. Each
of these provocatives of .this dire disease may be overcome
without danger by Holloway's remedies, provided they be
resorted to without delay the moment listlessness, loose-
ness, feverishness, or pain betrays disordered action. The
"directions" will enable the least cultivated to treat suc-
cessfully and subdue completely these warning symptoms
of cholera. Wher confidence in Holloway's preparations
has once been established, each believer in their virtues
will humanely recommend them to his acquaintances, that
none may foolishly harbour the foe's friends within his own
.

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TlMES.—There has been an unfortnnate tendency
of late years to punish crimes of violence against
the person with but slight severity in comparison
with crimes against property. Everybody, perhaps,
feels himself endangered by crimes of embezzlement,
but judges and magistrates have appeared hardly to
realise the amount of injury which is inflicted on
society by acts of violence. It is not, indeed, very
long since the prevalent leniency in this respect was
rudly shaken by an audacious outbreak of violence
on the part of our convict population. The alarm
which was created when garotte robberies were com-
mitted in the open street has left permanent traces
even upon our criminal legislation. When ticket-
of -leave men found so little to terrify them in the
consequences of their crimes that they made nothing
of knocking down passengers in such thoroughfares
as Oxford-street, and brutally maltreating them for
the paltry value of their watches, we felt that it was
time to adopt some sharp measures of repression.
The judges took to passing severe sentences, and
such crimes were rapidly checked. But it is rather
with regard to crimes of mere violence, committed
for no other reason than the indulgence of brutal
passions, that this leniency has of late been so con-
spicuous. In the case, especially, of cruelty com-
mitted by husbands against their wives, the mostin-
adequate punishments have been dealt out to the
most brutal offenders. This is a class of crimes,
indeed, as to the degree of which it is often difficult
to obtain exact legal evidence. The wife, as a rule,
avoids complaining till the last extremity; and, after
she has once obtained the protection of the law, she
constantly endeavours as far as possible to extenuate
her husband's offence. Moreover, in too many cases,
it is only the last piece of brutality, and by no means
the worst, which breaks the poor wife's patience ;
and the husband is punished for only a common as-
sault, when he is really guilty of an aggravated
series of malicious cruelties continued for years.
It is with great satisfaction, therefore, we ob-
serve from the report of the Middlesex Sessions
in our impression of yesterday that a very diffe-
rent course was adopted by Sergeant Dowling in
some cases of this character which came before him
for sentence. There was, in the first place, a rob-
bery, accompanied by the most open and undisguised
violence. On a Sunday afternoon, in broad day-
light, a gentleman was descending the steps of the
steamboat-pier opposite Essex-street, when he was
attacked on the top of the steps by two young men
with canes, who felled him with a blow on the
temple, robbed him of his watch, gave him a serious
fall on the steps as he was attempting to folloW them,
and eventually made their escape. They were ob-
served to belong to a gang of notorious thieves and
pickpockets, and they were subsequently arrested.
Their accomplices were placed at the bar with them,
and they were convicted of several violent robberies
in Holborn and Gray's-inn-lane. We shall, hap-
pily, be freed from these ruffians for a long time by
the sentences which were passed by Sergeant
Dowling. Three of them were sentenced to penal
servitude for ten years, one for seven, and another
for five years, and a sixth was condemned to a
year's imprisonment with hard labour. This, how-
ever, is a class of crimes with regard to which our
Judges are not again likely to commit the errors
that were so disastrous a few years ago. The other
two cases were instances of that brutal and object-
less violence to which we are principally referring.
In the first of these a man and woman, with their
daughter and a young man, who was their daugh-
ter's paramour, were convicted of what the Judge
called the most " outrageous and murderous"
violence upon a respectable man who lodged in the
same house with them. It seems he had com-
plained, and with justice, of the indecent behaviour
of the daughter, and in revenge for this they all
attacked him one evening, dragged him into a
back court, threw him down and beat him, and the
young man kicked him with such violence that he
has permanently lost the use of one of his arms.
This ruffian was sentenced to imprisonment with
hard labour for two years; the father and daughter
to a similar punishment for one year, and the
mother for six months. The last case was one of
those horrible instances of the maltreatment of a
wife by her husband. The unfortunate woman had
been so brutally misused, and the effects of the
man's brutality were so manifest, that though he
had at first pleaded not guilty, he changed his plea,
and submitted at once to judgment. He had, in
fact, almost murdered the woman. He had been
constantly imprisoned for assaults and for other
offences •, he had failed to support her, and had
then, as the judge said, " behaved towards her more
like a wild beast than a human being." There were
no considerations which could in any way mitigate
the brutality of his crime, and he was.sentenced to
the utmost punishment which the law allows--to
penal servitude for five years. These are just and
necessary sentences, and we are glad to see a judge
display such a sense of the enormity of these das-
tardly crimes. Nothing short of stern and sharp
justice will make any impression upon the class of
men who commit these cruelties. Such men are
like wild beasts, and like wild beasts they must be
tamed. There is, it may be added, a peculiar neces-
sity for the exercise of befitting severity at the pre-
sent moment. It is impossible not to be struck with
the fact that crimes of violence are becoming un-
usually prevalent. The public have been horrified
lately by a succession of murders such as it is diffi-
cult to remember within a similarly short space of
time. Some of them have been on the most whole-
sale scale, and all have been marked by one most
revolting feature—they have been committed on the
most slender provocation. An angry word, the
most ordinary feelings of spite and jealousy, or
even, it would seem in one case, a desire for noto-
riety, have been sufficient incitements to the most
cold-blooded murders. But it is seldom that such
a crime as murder could be thus recklessly commit-
ted unless the mind had been first familiarised with
lesser crimes of the same nature. Murder is the
very extremity of violence, and the impulse to
commit it would not generally be thus ripe and
ready for action unless its seeds had been fos-
tered by long familiarity with thoughts and scenes
of violence. Murders, in short, are but acts of vio-
lence full grown, and acts of violence, on the other
hand, are nothing less than incipient murders.
They should be regarded, therefore, with similar
indignation, and should be visited with a punish-
ment in proportion to their ultimate tendency.
It is not, indeed, improbable that the pernicious
leniency with which murders have of late years been
too often regarded may have stimulated the whole
series di kindred crimes. Every act of violence loses
something of its heinous character when murder
ceases to be execrated as the highest and most un-
pardonable of offences. We'trust, however, that the
period of this perverse philanthropy is at an end.
Crimes of violence above all others, are absolutely in-
compatible with civilised society. Other crimes are
an abuse of society ; these are its very annihilation.
They are a return to the most characteristic conditions
of savage life. They are the crimes, moreover, against
which the sufferers are most defenceless. In cases of
fraud a man makes use of weapons which are, to a
certain extent, at the disposal of his victims. Inge-
nuity and cunning may be baffled by acuteness and
watchfulness. But by the very fact of civilization
every one is deprived of those weapons and precau-
tions by which alone we could defend ourselves
against superior strength. In these matters we
place ourselves absolutely under the protection of
the law ; and we have a right, therefore, to demand
that we shall receive a more ample protection than
in the case of dangers against which we are more
or less able to take precautions for ourselves.
POST.—The question of negro suffrage stands on
a footing so entirely distinct from that of negro
emancipation, that it is with difficulty we can bring
ourselves to believe that any persons at all conver-
sant with the nature of political institutions can re-
gard the right of sharing in the administration of a
State as a legitimate consequence of elevation from
a state of servitude. That such persons do exist,
and in great numbers, on the other side of the
Atlantic, is, however, an incontestable fact, and it
is no less true that they include amongst them men
endowed with a fair share of sagacity, and pos-
sessed of no inconsiderable influence over those to
whom they are placed by their social position in
the relation of teachers. It would therefore be
equally idle and unbecoming to assume that several
millions of people, who, until the commencement
of the present summer were mere chattels, incap-
able of acquirin; or transferring the smallest
articles of property, must be obviously unfitted for
the discharge of high political functions, since there
are men of unquestionable intelligence and large ex-
perience who think otherwise. The question whether
a slave, who, until yesterday, knew nothing beyond
the range of the plantation in which he worked,
ought to be entrusted with the power of determin-
ing who shall be the rulers of a mighty Republic,
and of indirectly dictating the policy which shall
guide the State, is therefore one which is open to
dispute, and which, like other controverted
.points,
ought to be canvassed, without prejudice, on its own
merits. Horror of slavery is a very humane and
praiseworthy sentiment, but it must be apparent
that there is nothing in the question now submitted
which should, however remotely, tend to bring it
into operation.. The civil war in the United States
has now terminated. Slavery has been abolished.
The negro is now a free man, and all that remains
is to determine the precise political status he shall
hold in the Republic. In States such as Great Bri-
tain, where the enjoyment of political privileges is
dependent on the possession of a certain amount of
property, the right of an emancipated negro to exer-
cise the suffrage would probably be determined in
the same manner as that of his fellow-citizens.
With us the possession of property is regarded
(whether rightly or wrongly, it molten not) ais

deuce of industry and intelligence, ancl it is thought'
that the man who has a stake to lose will take a
warmer interest in the good government of a coun-
try than he who has none. But in the United States
of America, and in those countries where the only
qualifications for sharing in the administration of the
State, by electing those in whose hands the executive
and legislative power reposes, consist in being of a
certain age and of the male sex, it would seem natu-
rally to follow that the slave, having acquired the
status of citizen, would acquire with it the political
privileges incidental to citizenship. It must be con-
ceded, then, that the Abolitionists, who protest
against negro emancipation without negro suffrrage
as a half measure, and as a fraud upon the liberated
slave, are, at least, consistent in their reasoning,
and compel their opponents to accept the alterna-
tive of admitting that the foundation on which
manhood suffrage rests is unsound, or of according
to the emancipated slaves those political privileges
which are demanded for them. And, in truth, the
question of negro suffrage now forced on American
statesmen only raises, in another form, that of uni-
versal suffrage, and according as the first is deter-
mined must the second stand or fall. If those who
have the conduct of public affairs in the United
States find themselves in a dilemma, they must lay
the blame at the doors of those who modelled their
political institutions. It must never be forgotten
that those who advocate universal suffrage rest
their views on the assumption that every individual
in a State should have a voice in its management ;
that all are equally interested in its prosperity, and
that all possess for every practical purpose intelli-
gence sufficient to guide them in the discharge of
their political functions. Even supposing such an
assumption to be well founded as regards the mass
of a people possessing as between each other simi-
lar sympathies, and more or less influenced by the
same patriotic feelings, and imbued with the same
prejudices, it is clear that it no longer holds true if
the component elements of the State are in antago-
nism to each other, and, though apparently guided
by the same interests, are in truth diametricallY
opposed to each other. Now, it so happens that
in the United States of America abundant oppor-
tunity has been afforded of estimating the rela-
tions in which a free negro population stand to
those who have emancipated them. The process
of emancipation in the Northern States has been
slow, and never perhaps in the history of the world
did circumstances to all appearance more perfectly
conspire to cause a complete amalgamation between
a servile class and its liberators. The white popula-
tion of North America, instead of being stationary,
has been month by month and year by year re-
cruited from States in which slavery is unknown,
and it might therefore have been expected that
the new comers would be uninfluenced by any of
those prejudices which might actuate those who
personally had been brought up to consider their
coloured fellow citizens as an inferior race. But,
nevertheless, it is unquestionable that the condition
of the emancipated negro in the Northern States
has been, in the opinion of the majority of thinking
men, infinitely more galling than one of absolute
servitude. The slave, at all events, has a recognised
status; he is led to expect nothing, and he suffers no
disappointment. To be raised to the dignity of a
free man, simply to suffer indignities to which ne
free man should be exposed, is a lot which a rational
being in the condition of a slave could scarcely,
envy. It is therefore idle to suppose that the violent.
act of emancipation by whic4i some millions of slaves
have been suddenly thrust on an equality with those
who have hitherto been their masters, can engender
between the two classes feelings more harmonious
than those which we have seen in operation in the
free States of North America ' • and the community
of sympathy and interest which constitutes the sole
basis of universal suffrage must consequently be
wanting. If, however, to this consideration be
superadded those arising from the obvious incapa-
city of men not only without book education, but
without that knowledge which can alone be gained
by experience, and by the influences of civilisation,
to take part in civil government, the absurdity of
giving the emancipated slaves of the South the right
of selecting the representatives of the people be-
comes transparent. The mistake the advocates of
negro suffrage commit consists in supposing that if
they remove the fetters with which a man has been
confined for years, his limbs may be used with the
same activity as if they had been always free. The
history of the world ought surely to satisfy thew
that it is not possible merely by word of mouth to
bid a savage race be civilised.

COUNTRY MARKETS
BIRMINGHAM—THURSDAY.
At this day's market there was a large supply of nevr
English wheat, which found buyers at a decline of 2s to 33
per qr. ; old firmly held, but to have effected sales a reduc-
tion must have been submitted to. Barley unaltered. Oats
tending upwards. Beans is per qr. higher. Peas firm•
The millers reduced the retail price of flour 3s 4d per sack.
Currencies :—English wheat, white, 45s to 50s ; red, 39°
to 48s per 36 stone. Malting barley, 30s to 35s ; grinding,
22s to 25s per qr. Oats, 24s to 30s ; Irish, 21s to 24s per
30 stone. Beans, 42s to 458 ; and peas, 40s to 42s per qr.