The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-28 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MARCH 28, 1866.

LAW INTELLIGENCE.—Th s Day.

SHOREDITCH COUNTY COURT.
(Before Mr. Dasent.)
SELDON V. THE METROPOLITAN PARCELS DELIVERY
COMPANY. ,
This was an action to recover £l5 damage alleged to
have been sustained by the' plaintiff, who is a milliner,
through non-delivery of a parcel entrusted to the defen-
dants to carry to Market Harborough.
Mr. Smith appeared for plaintiff, and Mr. Stammers was
counsel for the defendants.

It was proved that the parcel had been handed to the
keeper of one of the company's receiving houses, and she
deposed that she bad banded it to one of the company's
carts. The secretary to the company, who was called as a
witness for the plaintiff, slid be was unable to produce
the papers relating to the parcel in question, as they
had been lost, but be had written to the plaintiff to the
effect that he held the Midland Railway Company's receipt
for the parcel. Some discussion ensued, and the question
then resolved itself into an issue which rendered it impe-
rative upon the plaintiff to prove every step of the case,
defendant's counsel urging that the letter of the person to
whom the parcel was addressed at Market llarboro' was
not evidence, and that in the absence of proof to the con-
trary there was no evidence but that such person was
actually in possession of the parcel at the present time.
Mr. Smith said that if every point was to be proved, the
case must be adjourned, and ho would call such evidence
as would prove, though at some cost, the facts upon which
the plaintiff relied. _ _

His Honour then adjourned the case, but refused to allow
any costs under the circumstances.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.—This Day.

MORANT BAY AND STONEY GUT.

(From t 1 Special Correspondent of the Times.)
KINGSTON, JAMAICA, Feb. 24.

After three weeks spent in examining witnesses
at Spanish Town, the Royal Commissioners took
holiday, and on the evening of the 15th went on
board her Majesty's ship Constance for a day's
visit to St. Thomas-in-the-East. They took with
them a black woman named Sarah Robinson, whose
story is worth telling. She lived near Morant Bay,
and having heard that evidence was being taken to
show the excesses committed in suppressing the re-
bellion resolved to contribute her share, or some-
thing more than her share, towards a chapter of
horrors. So she borrowed a horse, rode 31 miles to
Kingston, took the train thence to Spanish Town,
and presented herself before the Commission. Her
husband and son, she said, had been hung ; and it
was at first proposed that she should be hung, but
the Provost-Marshal would not allow this, because
she was too ill. However, the black soldiers came
into her house, took hold of her by her arms and
legs—appropriate cries and gestures showqd how—
and robbed her of her wedding-ring. With immense
volubility and illustrative gesticulation, she described
how, during martial law, these black soldiers took
infant " pickaninnies" by the legs and dashed out
their brains against trees. At first she declared that
she had seen so many children disposed of in this
way that she could not reckon them. When pressed
rather closely the number dwindled down to two.
Then she described something more horrible still.
" I saw soldiers," she said, " go to a woman who
was being delivered by a grandy' (midwife), and
they shot the woman, shot the little baby, shot the
grandy." This she saw with her own eyes. She
could'nt tell the name of the woman, though they
were neighbours, but she persisted in her story, with
abundant assertions of its truth. The Royal Com-
missioners looked incredulous, and whispered toge-
ther. Then Sir Henry Storks said, "Do you think
you could point out the house where the woman was
shot ?" Oh yes! She could point out the very
house. " Then you shall go with us to-morrow
and do so," his Excellency replied. Sarah Robin-
son seemed in no ways taken aback, and somebody
having been appointed to ride the borrowed horse,
Sarah went that evening with the Royal Commis-
sioners and the aides-de-camp to Kingston, and in
this good company, half envied, half pitied by
the negroes who flocked round her at the rail-
way station, was duly escorted on board the
Constance. She was a grotesquely ugly little negress
of some five-and-forty, with a jaunty little hat set
on one side of her head, and underneath the hat the
usual gay bandanna ; making some pretensions to
coquetishness, and gazing around her with large
wondering eyes, which now and then, when she was
questioned, had a look of great cunning.. Her eyes
opened wider than ever when, following the Gover-
nor upon deck, she found herself in front of the
Marines drawn up there as a guard of honour to
receive his Excellency. She did not seem quite sure
that her mission was not to exterminate Sarah
Robinson as she stood, and the droll way in which
she sidled from her prominent position was too
much for the gravity even of the Marines. lam
afraid that some dim consciousness of wrong-doing
prompted Sarah Robinson's alarm, as will be seen
presently.

The Constance started from her anchorage off
Kingston soon after daylight on Friday morning,
and dropped gently down to Port Royal. Here,
within half a bow-shot of the shore, you float over
the site of the submerged citydestroyed in the great
earthquake of 1692. Tradition still preserves the
site of the ancient wharves and fortifications.
Indeed men still living tell you of times when the
submerged houses were plainly to be discerned near
the anchorage for vessels of war. At the end of the
last century the ruins might be seen from the boat
which sailed over them ; and down to 1835 the
sites of buildings were traceable in from four to six
fathoms water. There has been one slight shock of
earthquake here since my arrival, but it was so
slight that few perceived it, and one was inclined to
boast to the natives that we, now and then, had a
more successful trembling of earth at home. But
the record of the Port Royal catastrophe makes one
thoroughly contented to enjoy nature in repose.
The shock must indeed have been a powerful
one. The ground, we are told, swelled and heaved
like a rolling sea ; people were swallowed up
in the rents ; some were caught by the middle
in these fissures and thus squeezed to death ;
others after being engulfed were cast up
again with quantities of water. Yonder there, in
the grave-yard at Green Bay, one Louis Galdy lies
buried. There are different roads to fame or noto-
riety, and Galdy's claims upon the notice of pos-
terity are that he was buried alive by the earth-
quake, cast up again in his horrid tomb, and lived
for 47 years afterwards. The other inhabitants of
Port Royal and the town itself were less fortunate.
The large store-houses on the harbour side were
totally submerged ; the mast-heads of the vessels
were to be seen among the house walls, in a moment
a thousand acres of land were swallowed up by the
sea, and Port Royal was not. The Palisades, which
are passed as the steamer rounds the point and
leaves the harbour, were formed by the Spaniards,
who united various little islands by a line of inter-
vening stockades. Against these the currents and
the wind heaped sand, and formed the continuous
spit now called the Palisades. The shore rises pre-
cipitously on their outward edge, so that within a
few yards there is 10 fathoms water, inside the
ground shelves off into shoals, and the mangrove
tree, now on the point of blossoming, flourishes
luxuriantly. As you approach Morant Bay, the
'ine of coast fringed in parts by cocoa-nut trees,
with the well-wooded mountain ranges in the back
ground, is picturesque indeed. Sometimes a stiff
" norther" comes down from the hills, and makes this
coasting trip anything but a pleasant one. But the
Commissioner was favoured, and could enjoy the
prospect hardly disturbed by a ripple.
Almost the first intimation which the inhabitants
had of the visit was the salute which announced the
Governor's arrival in the Bay. On landing the
Commissioners found themselves in a straggling
village which in England would be called a hamlet.
There was the usual ruined house—a once consider-
able house, speaking pitifully of better days. The
one tavern was turned into a court-house, and could
house and feed you no longer. One tolerably long
street, with a bill rising rather abruptly on its
landward side, constitutes the town of Morant Bay.
It contains perhaps 40 or 50 houses and shops of
the village class ; on the hill slope are villas of a
better class. In the centre of the Bay removed from
the street about a stone's throw, and approached
by the meanest of mean squares, stands the Court-
house, the sight of which now raises so many pain-
ful associations. It must have been once a building
of some pretensions. A flight of stone steps led up
to the centre door, over which rose a wooden clock-
tower, with a conspicuous clock. There was a vestry-
hall, with convenient rooms flanking it, a cell or
two, where the marks of old " bilboes " were still
visible ; a sort of armoury, with old firelocks and
belts used by the militia in 1831-2 ; and a room be-
hind where the table was spread on the 11th of
October with a dinner which was never to be eaten.
The building looks defensible enough. If the
Volunteers had hell the steps which lead up to
each side of the central entrance, they might have
held their own ; biis they seem to have suffered
themselves to be mobbed into the covered space
under the steps, whence they retreated into the'
building by a door upon the ground floor. I need
not go over the details of the tragedy which fol-
lowed. But looking at the ruins it is difficult to
understand that the Court-house could have caught
fire from the school-zoom. Neither this little build-
ing nor Mr. Price's house on the other side was con-
nected with the Court-house. They are separated
by a distance of some feet, and though the flames
may have communicated from one roof to the other,
the presumption would rather be that " the fire-
stick" was put to tic Court-house itself. When
it once caught fire the flames spread with great
rapidity, for the joists and Mooring were of pitched
pine ; and the wretched inmates who were yet alive
then ran across into Mr. Price's house, or jumped
into the pinguin bush, at the rear, hoping to avoid
the yelling murderers by whom they were beset.
Directly behind the Court-house there is a steep de-

scent to a road skirting the eminence on which the
building stands, and below this, again, there is a
lower road, called the wharf road, which is almost
upon the beach. The site of the Court-house was
itself an old battery, and two long 42-pounders are
still mounted there, useless, of course, either to rebel
or patriot. The declivity below is thick bush, and it
was into this that Mr. Georges plunged andlaycon-
coaled, till at dusk, sorely wounded as he was, he
was able to crawl to a neighbouring house, deserted
by its inmates, and there snatch such repose as a man
could take who believed that the murderers must by
and by be on his track. Few were so fortunate as
Mr. Georges. There a little mound marks where
Mr. Albergo and others of the victims lie. At the
foot of yonder cotton-tree more are interred. A
long trench in the rear of the charred ruins marks
less honoured tombs. Gordon's remains are some-
where here below. The exact whereabouts is care-
fully concealed, The hanging wasdone on the thres-
hold of the Court-house, and there still are the long
bamboos which formed the scaffold. To Gordon and
some other of the alleged ringleaders a post of dis-
honour was assigned. They were hung from the
arch of the Court-house, and were called the arch-
rebels—a ghastly pun, not good to •hear, even at
this interval. To that gun, embedded deep in earth,
Marshall was tied and flogged, and writhing with
the blows—God knows whether with or without a
threatening look or gesture—was hung forthwith
on the ever-ready gallows close by.
One walks amid the ruins, and the tombs, and
the lime-strewed trench with a sickening sense, and
it is with a feeling of relief that a small cavalcade of
ponies appears and the word is given for Stony Gut.
On one of these ponies Sarah Robinson takes her
seat, as great a personage as anybody, and seems t•
enjoy her prominence immensely-. I must finish
with Sarah straightway-. She rode to Stony Gut
with the Governor, the Commissioners, and the
aides-de-camp. The house she was to point out was
not at Stony Gut, but two miles further on, and she
led the way to a cluster of small settlements called
Middleton. His Excellency, with Mr. Gurney, Mr.
Maule, and the whole following, went patiently in
her wake. At length she pointed out a house—a
small cottage, made of mud and wattle, with hard
earthen floor, divided into two rooms or compart-
ments. But there were these difficulties in her
story—first, that the triple murders, if they took
place in this house, could not possibly have been
seen from the road, as she alleged ; and secondly,
that the owner and occupier of the house, with the
neighbours, denied all knowledge of the massacre.
This, however, did not alter Sarah Thompson's view
of things, and she stoutly persisted that she was
telling the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Then a high Commission Court was held under a
tall, but not particularly wide-spreading cocoa-nut
tree. Depositions were taken unfavourable to
Sarah's story ; and in the absence of secretary or
shorthand writer, Mr. Maule took the notes. The
principal witness kept up wonderfully ; but when
the Commissioners returned to Morant Bay, and
proceeded to the police-station, at which plumed
hats and swords had been left, she seemed to think
that her time had come to make a clean breast of it.
Mr. Maule suddenly found her at his feet, kissing a
pair of somewhat dusty boots, and refusing to be
lifted up. She said, apparently with much inward
and certainly with considerable outward struggling,
that she had made a mistake—that was her mild
euphemism for the lie ; but if Massa would not shoot
her, she would never—never make a mistake again.
The Commissioners ought to have been indignant,
but I believe the difficulty was to keep grave. Sarah
was assured that she would not be flogged, but then
she instantly came to the conclusion that she was to
be flogged, and that redoubled her lamentation
until a comfortable assurance came that the
" buckra" gentlemen did not even mean to -inflict
this punishment.

It is difficult to paint too glowingly the lovely
prospect which you have in continual sight during
the ascent from Morant Bay to Stony Gut. The
real Gut is not traversed by those who approach
" Bogle's Chapel" from the Morant Bay side. It was
from the Blue Mountain Valley that Col. Hobbs's
force climbed up the mountain through the rain,
which made of every watercourse a mountain tor-
rent. The road to the chapel from the bay winds over
the mountain side and commands a view now far sea-
ward, now of a broad valley, rich with cane-pieces
and groves of cocoa-nut trees, varied by bananas
and plantains, and forest trees of luxuriant tropical
growth. The settlement of which Bogle's chapel
forms the centre commands a magnificent view of
the fruitful valley of the Blue Mountain, with a
glimpse of the sea beyond. The four walls, of mud
and wattle, are still standing, and the building may
have held about 60 or 70 people. A little to the
right, looking down the valley, was Bogle's cottage
and the:boiling-house for his sugar-canes. Lower
down was Bowii's residence, or the remains of it ;
ne had besides a boiling-house and a crushing-
house, both now in ruins. Around each cottage
was a small piece of ground, perhaps averaging half
or threw-quarters of an acre, where canes or ground
provisions were nowluxuriantly growing. The half-
burnt cottages had to be sought out—they were
hidden by the thick rich foliage of bananas or plan-
tain trees. The owners of all these cottages were
small settlers, who farmed their own land here-
abouts, probably rented two or three acres besides,
and took a turn of work upon the neighbouring
sugar estates when it suited them. An English pea-
sant would have thought himself thrice-blessed with
one-half of these wordly possessions.

HEALTH OF THE METROPOLIS•

(From the Registrar-General's Weekly Report.)

In the week that ended on Saturday, March 24, the births
registered in London and twelve other large towns of the
United Kingdom were 4,557 ; the deaths registered, 3,808.
The annual rate of mortality was 32 per 1,000 persons
living.

In London the births of 1,150 boys and 1,069 girls, in
all 2,219 children, were registered in the week. In the
corresponding weeks of ten years, 1856-65, the average
number, corrected for increase of population, was 2,132.
The deaths registered in London during the week were
1,649. It was the 12th week of the year, and the average
number of deaths for that week is, with a correction for
increase of population, 1,498. The mortality exhibits a
decrease on that of the two previous weeks ; but it is still
exceedingly high, for the deaths aro in excess of the num-
ber computed for the third week of March by 151.
Twenty-two deaths were registered as having occurred
in the Pancras workhouse between the 12th and 18th inst.,
inclusive. Mr. Lance, the Registrar writes:—" The in-
mates of the workhouse are now nearly 2,000 in number;
an immense quantity of houses had been pulled down in
the parish to make way for the Midland Railway works,
and whole families have been obliged, in consequence, to
go into the workhouse, not having been able to find other
accommodation.

Eight deaths were registered in the Small-pox Hospital
between the 18th and 23d instant inclusive. Mr. Watts,
the Registrar, states that six of the deceased persons had
not been vaccinated, and on the two others the operation
had apparently been performed with doubtful effect. The
disease is not confined to any quarter, the present cases
having been brought from Dalston, Lambeth, St. Luke,
Middlesex, Camberwell, Bethnal-green, and Marylebone.
The hospital is full, and patients have been refused ad-
mission. _ _

A young woman, whose age was only 141 years, died
after childbirth. A woman, aged 42 years, died from
epilepsy after eating a mussel at supper.
The following eight deaths by carriage accidents were
registered in the week :
. .

The son of a carpenter, aged nine years, thrown under
the wheel of a waggon. Died on 12th March at St. George's
Hospital.

Acarman, aged 68 years, jammed between two carte
near Newington-green. Died on 21st March at St. Bar-
tholomew's Hospital.

A flsh-dealer, aged 25 years, fell from a cart. Died on
19th March in the London Hospital.
A milliner, aged 65 years, run over. Died on 21st March
in the London Hospital.

A girl, aged 11 years, run over. Died on 21st March in
the London Hospital.

A pensioner, aged 80 years, run over by an omnibus.
Died on the Eth March in the Workhouse, Whitechapel.

Died on

A coal- dealer, aged G 5 years, fell from a van
15th March in St. Thomas's hospital.
A dealer in plaster of Paris, aged 55 years, thrown from
a cart by a van. Manslaughter against the driver. Died
on 13th March at 5, River-street, Islington.
The annual rate of mortality last week was 28 per 1,000
in London, 30 in Edinburgh, and 32 in Dublin ; 31 in
Bristol, 28 in Birmingham, 57 in Liverpool, 41 in Man-
chester, S 6 in Salford, 33 in Sheffield, 39 in Leeds. 24 in
Bull, 31 in Nowcastle-upon-Tyne, and 30 in Glasgow.

The ship Asteropc, from Wellington, New Zea-
land, has arrived, bringing £70,000 in gold, which has
been sent to the Bank of England.