The Sun.
London, England, 1862-03-12 00:00:00

MURDER MT ESSEX.

A most extraordinary and sudden affair took place
at Dunmow late on Saturday evening ; and, as an
instance of the cowardly effect of the concealed
knife, and its dreadful consequences, has (says the
Essex Herald) seldom been paralleled in this county.
About 11 o'clock a few wrangling words in rather
a high tone were heard coming from near the gas-
lamp, opposite the doctor's pond, and when two or
three young men went to the spot, they found that
a man was standing there who had just been
wounded in some way with a sharp instrument, and
1 at that moment two men were escaping across the
Downs as fast as they could; unfortunately the
persons alarmed were so occupied with their atten-
tion to the sufferer that the offenders made their
escape. The person thus desperately assaulted
walked only a few yards across the road before he
fell, and being taken into the Star yard, died almost
directly. It was soon found that the deceased is
named James Barnard, from Cophill, near Shefford,
in Bedfordshire—a young married man, about 27
years of age, who travelled the country as a hawker
of umbrellas, braces, clothes' lines, &c. From what
can be learnt at present, it appears that he had been
i out on his calling, and was going home to his lodg-
ings at the Bell, at Church-end, where his wife was ;
no one seems to know whether he had had any
quarrel worth naming with arty one; and he is said,
by parties who knew him, to have been a quiet in-
offensive person, and therefore the fear is that the
dreadful deed was done in a moment of malice and
spite, but by whom is at present involved in
mystery, which the police are sedulously endea-
vouring to unravel.
A correspondent writing (Monday morning, ten
o'clock) says :—When I wrote to you last night the
police were scouring the neighbourhood, and had
been hither and thither but without success ; how-
ever, early in the evening Superintendent Roger-
son obtained a clue, and forthwith, finding a Dun-
mow man, named John Button—who was said to
be one of the two seen to hasten across the Downs
just before Barnard fell—he (Button) voluntarily
confessed that he was present whca the assault
took place, although he did not touch the deceased,
and that a man named Henry Eagle, of Little
Easton, was the person who had blows with the
deceased, and must have been the perpetrator of
the dreadful deed. Button further willingly and
earnestly detailed the conversation he had with
Eagle as the,y were going home. The superinten-
dent immediately took two constables with him
(knowing that the accused, from previous circum-
stances, was a most desperate fellow), and succeeded
in finding him at the dwelling of a relative. While
the superintendent and police-constable Day went
in at the front door, the accused attempted to escape
from the back; but police-constable Johnson was
ready for him, and after some resistance he was
secured, and immediately brought to the Dunmow
police station. This dreadful case has caused much
more consternation at Dunmow than any occurrence
of the kind for many years, and although it was
Sunday evening a great concourse thronged the
sides of the cart when Eagle was brought into the
town. The prisoner has been quiet in the cell
,a
all
inight, but he is watched most narrowly, and
police-constable sat up with him for that purpose.