The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-13 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE.

THE JURISDICTION OF COUNTY COURTS. —ln Vice..
Chancellor James's Court an application was made for the
transfer of a plaint from the Bristol County Court. The
subject matter of the plaint exceeded £5OO, the
limit fixed by the Act, and the principal defen-
dants lived at Bournemouth, the others living at Plymouth
and Chew Stoke. It was submitted that if the matter
were tried in the County Court, the defendants would
have no means of interrogating the plaintiff. The appli-
cation was opposed. The Vice-Chancellor said the object
of the Act was to bring home justice to the doors of de-
fendants as well as of plaintiffs, and there would be an
order for a transfer to that court.
A LIBEL ON A GAnnr.Nnn.—A curious libel case has
been heard in the Shciiff's Court. A gardener, name 1
Barnes, who had been in the service of Lord and Lady
Rolle for nearly thirty years, left the service on
account of ill-health. He complained that Lady
Rolle had written a libel against him in two
letters which she wrote after the plaintiff
left, in which she spoke of the neglected state of
her garden, greenhouse, Sze., through the plaintiff's
negligence. Witnesses attended from Bicton, Devonshire,
Lord Rolle's estate, and the plaintiff himself was exa-
mined. Her ladyship allowed judgment to go by default,
and the jury gave a verdict for £lOO, the full amount
claimed.

MONEY LENDERS AND COMPROMISES.—Two summonses
againzt !limey lenders for fraud have been applied for at
Marlborough Police-court, on behalf of a young man
who is entitled to a reversionary property in
rents, of £14,000, who had borrowed money before he
came of age, giving deeds for it. After coming of age, he
borrowed more money, and a deed was put before him,
purporting to include all the amounts borrowed, and
to render the other deeds void. He signed it without
reading it, and only became aware that both deeds

were still in force, by proceedings in equity being taken
against him. Mr. Knox, after putting a few questions,
asked the counsel if it were really a /kind
fide proceeding,
as four-fifths of such cases were compromised or with-
drawn, The young man referred to, being in court, was
called forward, and decl;.red his intention to go on with
the proceedings. The summonses were accordingly
granted.

HEAVY DAMAGES AGAINST A RAILWAY COMPANY. A
the Manchester Winter Assizes a Congregationalist

minister, residing at Tintwistle, obtained a verdict for
2,000 as compensation for injuries received on the
London and North-Western Railway, in a collision which
took place near Leeds in 1867. Paralysis ensued from
the accident, and he had to resign his charge and a salary
of £3OO a year, which ho received from the British and
Foreign Bible Society.
FIRING RicKs.—At the Salisbury Assizes, two cases of
rick burning have been tried. In one, the criminal
had applied for relief to the guardians, and being
refused, said he would do something for his bread,
and afterwards fired the rick. He was sentenced to six
years' penal servitude. The other man was believed to be
of unsound mind, and his conduct being very strange in
the dock, he was ordered to be detained during her
Majesty's pleasure. Upon hearing the sentence ho asked
to be sent to the asylum at once.

ATTEMPTING TO UPSET A TRAIN.—A well-dressed man,
named Mangles, was charged at Richmond, Yorkshire,
with attempting to upset a passenger train by placing a
sleeper on the lines. The prisoner, after putting the
sleeper on the lines, himself went by the train. The
engine knocked the sleeper out of the way, and no shock
was felt, but the prisoner when he got out said they had
run over something. He told an old woman in the after-
noon that it might be the last time he should see her. He
was committed for trial.

A. BAD DAY FOIL GAILOTTERS.—On Saturday
afternoon the men convicted a few days ago at
Leeds, before Mr. Justice Lush, of robberies with violence
at Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, and Whitkirk (a rural dis-
trict near Leeds), underwent the punishment of twenty-
four lashes each with the cat-o'-nine-tails in the borough
gaol of Leeds. _

'ISIT OF HER MAJESTY TO AN AGED WIDOW.
—lt having been intimated to her Majesty, through the
medium of that well-known agriculturist, Mr. Headington,
of Ragstone Farm, that a Mrs. Plumridge, the widow of
an agricultural labourer, living on a small income derived
from the savings of her late husband and herself as agri-
cultural servants, at Touch-en-cnd, in the parish of Bray,
Berks, and who is at the advanced age of 101 years, had
repeatedly expressed a desire to see her Majesty, the
Queen, in the most considerate manner, gratified the
wishes of the old lady on Wednesday. Her Majesty,
accompanied by Princess Beatrice, and attended by the
Hon, Caroline Cavendish, drove to Ragstone Farm, when
Mr. Headington had the honour of shewing her Majesty
the way to Widow Plumridge's cottage. It is needless to
say how much the old lady felt honoured by the visit,
and at the kind way in which her Majesty and the Princess
conversed with her.

THE DEATH OF A MARTYR TO CIRCUMSTANCE.—
Mr. W. H. Barber, whose romantic story in connection
with the great will forgeries of Fletcher and his confede-
rates, was once familiar enough to the public, died on
Sunday of heart disease, in his sixty-first year. The Fletcher
frauds were accomplished by means of forged documents
dealing with unclaimed dividends in the Bank of
England—the confederates being used by him chiefly
to personate legatees and witnesses to pretended sig-
natures. Mr. Barber, who was employed by Fletcher in
the customary way to prove the forged wills and transact
other business in connection with them, was convicted in
1844 at the Old Bailey as an accomplice; but was subse-
quently proved, both by the separate and independent
confessions of Fletcher and all his accomplices, and by
numerous collateral evidences, to have acted in the
business with Lone fides. Barber's case is ably set
forth in a volume from the pen of Mr. E. H. Thomas,
on the judgment of the Court of Queen's Bench, on Mr.
Barber's application for his certificate ; but the romance
of Mr. Barber's life must be sought in the picturesque and
touching narrative of his sufferings which, under the title
of " Transported for Life," was published by him in
Mr. Dickens's Household Words in July and August
1802. A pamphlet on the Barber case, entitled
" The Royal Pardon Vindicated," was also pub-
lished by the late Sir George Stephen. The case
of Mr Barber would be memorable, if for no other reason,
as the first example of an innocent man obtaining compen-
sation from the nation for a wrongful conviction before a
criminal tribunal. £5,000 were voted to him by Parlia-
ment in 1859 on the recommendation of Lord Derby's
Government; but unhappily, except we believe in the
solitary instance of Mr. Bowickel the promckat.ih4liet
been followed.-naiily Fan ~