The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-18 00:00:00

Liverpool Cotton Market.—This Day.

Market opens very strong. Sales, probably 15,000
or 20,000 bales.

Thuggism in New Zealand.

The greatest excitement has been created in this
province by the arrest of a gang of four men, who,
with other accomplices who have, it is supposed,
gone to Australia, have evidently for a length of
time been committing robberies on the West Coast
gold fields, and in the course of their career have
committed upwards of 30 atrocious and cold-blooded
murders. The suspicions of Mr. Jervis, innkeeper
at Canvas Town—which had been aroused by the
disappearance of four persons, all residing at Deep
Creek, named Felix Matthiew, hotel-keeper ; John
Kempthorne, storekeeper ; Jas. Pontius, miner; and
J. Dudley, storekeeper—were directed towards a
party of four strangers who put up at his house and left
shortly Lefore the unfortunate victims started for
Nelson on the 12th of June, with a pack-horse and
considerable property in goods and money with them,
where they never arrived. Mr. Jervis tracked them
on their way until he lest all clue, and then com-
municated with the police. General suspicion was
roused, and large parties volunteered to search the
&strict, highly to their credit declining the rewards
offered by the relatives of the murdered men. The
gang suspected by Mr. Jeri is, who when they were
at Canva3Town were almost destitute, were arrested
at Nelson, pretending to be unknown to each other,
flush of money, having purchased now clothes and
most suspiciously having all shaved off their beards
and moustaches. Their names are Richard Burgess,
alias Hall ; Thos. Kelly, alias Hannan, alias Noon ;
Thomas, alias John Joseph Sullivan ; and William,
alias Phil Levy. Thomas Sullivan had, strangely
enough, assumed the name of John Joseph Sullivan,
a man wanted by the Otago police, on his arrival in
the colony about three months ago, indicating that
the gang had connexions in Australia, where, in-
deed, they had been long known as most desperate
characters. After their arrest Sullivan made a con-
fession, azknowlldgir g
that the gang had not only
waylaid and murdered the four men above-men-
tioned, but also Mr. Dobson, jun., the Government
Surveyor of Canterbury, and a pedlar, named Jas.
Battle, all of whose bodes had beef recovered from
his information ; but he also stated that they had in
their cups bragged of many other " exploits" of the
like character which they had committed previous
to his joining them ; and there is too much reason
to fear that these revelations fall short of the
actual facts, for the sudden disappearance of a
great many persons at different times fearfully
harmonises with the man's statements, and
many of the circumstances narrated by him
are corroborated by the evidence of other parties.
Mr. Dobson was garotted on the most scientific prin-
ciples, and so were James Dudley and Battle, show-
ing that some of the gang were such proficients in
this fatal art that in ono case the medical man could
assign no cause of death except a slight congestion
of the brain and lungs,
but not of itself sufficient to
account for strangulation in the total absence of any
external violence beyond a slight mark of pressure on
and displacement of the apple of the throat. Kelly,
or Noon, had been tried for murder at the Ovens, in
Victoria, in 1853, for which his brother was hanged.
Burgess had been mate to the notorious Capt. Mel-
ville, and was known to be the most daring but cool
and cautious desperado in Australia. Levy had kept
a shanty on the banks of the Molyneux, in Otago,
and the number of bodies of persons found drowned
in crossing that stream had excited the suspicions of
the police, but no proof was ever brought against
him. In fact, the career of the gang would fill a
Volume. Ii addition to these murders they had been
watching Mr. Yates, the gold buyer of the Bank of
New South Wales in Otago, but he escaped their
attentions. It is also proved that they carried strych-
nine, with the diabolic object of poisoning any party
too numerous for attack by joining with them and
seizing the opportunity of drugging their liquor at
any resting place. At the time of their arrest they
had
p come
Bank of New South Wales, and one of them was on
the
Australiathepurpose of robbing the
to obtain reinforce-
ments ments and appliances. They had fully reconnoitred
the fremiEes, and their
plan was for one to go in and
see the manager just before
oin t t
of e goingN n
l Nelson
o to
for
the closing hour, and
whilst he was engaged the rest were to rush in,
close the doors (which would not then excite at-
tention), overpower the clerks, and murder them
all. One body was to be buried, in the hope that
it would be thought he had done the deed and
escaped by steamer to Australia, as they intended to
do, having laid their plans accordingly. The con-
fession of Sullivan was fully corroborated by the
discovery of the bodies just as he indicated, the
strychnine which was concealed as he declared, and
the evidence of many witnesses, which, put together,
makes a most extraordinary chain of evidence, suffi-
cient to have convicted them without Sullivan's con-
fession, but unimpeachable with it. They had been
committed, and would probably be tried at a special
commission in September.—Australlga and New
Zealand Gazette.

As-
Aoricgoinrreosfpothnidsebnitt
osfuFgrgeenscths
slang. " I was looking over an old annotated copy of the
Satires of Boileau, and in the third, where a dinner-
borelise?o3vießrEedß Tl?h-e-
-tha h-el'U has Vir
di
invites an [unwilling friendto ditio with him, ho
holds out, amongst other inducements—
Moliere avec Tartuffo y doit jouer son role,
Et Lambert, qui plus est, ra'a donn6 sa parole.
The friend laughingly replies,
Quoi ! Lambert ?
And the other rejoins,

Oui, Lambert! 3 domain. C'est assez.
So that this joke about Lambert is as old the time of
Boileau.