The Sun.
London, England, 1861-09-09 00:00:00

THE COVENTRY POISONING CASE.

COVENTRY, SEPT. 7.
The inquiry was resumed at St. Mary's Hall this
morning at ten o'clock, before W. S. Poole, Esq.,
coroner, and the jury empannelled.
The hall and its approaches were crowded to
excess throughout the proceedings. The prisoner
Beamish was, of course, the great object of attrac-
tion, and as he passed to and from the hall-the
anxiety of the crowd to catch a glimpse of him was
strongly manifested. The door of the police-station,
from whence the prisoner could hardly by any pos-
sibility have been seen at any moment during the
day, was almost as effectually blocked up as the
entrance to the hall.

Mr. 0. Minster was again in attendance on
behalf of the Crown ; Mr. Griffin and Mr. Powell
(of Birmingham), appeared for the prisoner.
Beamish was present as on the former occasion.
John Weston, registrar of marriages for the city
of Coventry, proved the marriage of Win. Beamish
with Betsey Stokes, on the 11th of August, 1849.
Thomas Jones said—l am landlord of the General
Wolfe, at Foleshill, which is about a mile and a
half from Coventry: I know William Beamish.
He first came to my house about six months ago.
He had a female with him whom he called
" Emma." He was most attentive to her, and I
thought he was courting her.
Jane Stokes recalled and re-examined—On the
Monday night before the deceased died, William
Beamish bought some port wine. He said his wife
wished to have some. When I went about nine
o'clock that night she was having some with a little
toasted bread in it. She drank the whole glass of

wine. I did not see that she was sick after that.
I remained an hour after she took it. Beamish told
me he gave her some more about four o'clock on the
Tuesday morning,
William Henry Beamish, a boy 11 years old, and
son of the deceased, then deposed to the family
being taken ill after breakfast, as already described.
He then said—l have seen the memorandum book
produced ; my father used to keep it in the parlour
cupboard; it belongs to him; some days after we
were all taken ill he sent me to fetch that book.
(The book was the one from which the note found
in deceased's pocket is supposed to have been torn.)
I took it to him and he sat down and wrote in it.

I never saw my mother write in the book ; the cup-
board is not kept locked. I did not write the
words " Dear wife, I hope you"—but I did write
the words on the opposite side. It was after my
sister died that I saw my father write in the book.
Emma limper said—l am a widow. I live
Mr. Hart's factory yard. lam
.sister of William
Beamish. My brother has worked in Mr. Hart's
factory yard for about a month from to-day. He
has during that time • had his breakfast with me
every morning. He brings me coffee, and I have
made it for him.
By Mr. Powell—My brother was out of work a
long time before his employment at the factory, and
I know they were in great distress.
elithographer
at
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have a
113,
never said
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St,
o
John Prestidge said—l live by the side of Harnall-
lane near the garden. lam foreman of the brick
company, and am bailiff of the gardens; one of
them
iesiti
any
either
eterhoremaotpscicaouirnpmtastilacobenoouofrt o
vermin,the r Beamish,
e r
manidn
.There
containsh er e
are
nine
o 7
stor 000poo
hrdt
hsBN.eooßtlghraweirtredienseihtinffsfmosruahsieidus—mrle,
natlni;live
altogether,
nothing
but was aid
tri
abouth e
Martin's-lane, near Charing-cross. I am fac-simi-
lis
the last 40 years. For the last 30 years I have been
employed in giving evidence in courts of laws as to
matters of handwriting. The writing of the note
of the 14th August is not, I think, in a feigned hand.
I think the note is written in the same handwriting
as the documents, only the letters are small in the
note.
a r d

No evidence for the prisoner being offered, the
Coroner proceeded to sum up with great care.
The jury retired to consider their verdict, and
after an absence of about 20 minutes returned a
verdict of wilful murder against Beamish in the
cases both of his wife and of his child. _ _

The jury appended to their verdict, in the first
instance, an expression of their opinion that the
girl Statham was aware of the poison being admi-
nistered by Beamish, and therefore was an accessory
before the fact, but by the advice of the Coroner—
who informed them that this would be tantamount
to finding a verdict of wilful murder against per
also, which there was not sufficient evidence to Juan:
tify them in doing—they withdrew the latter Po
r"
of their yerdiot.

It has been said that international induElre ex-
hibitions have a natural tendency to develope and
sfieantnieglltlauinirnrgeoeusrifeltohfdroeetrmphc themselves
igt
nreseeshat
istotv:civtvnohef
ireinstactcoihhef
enncsucceeding
The truth..swttohuelea'nkotrhbepjpiseorcietnrsemark is being strikingly ex-
emplified by the widespread preparations now Mak-:
to be properly represented in the forthcomnweadiciani°ldgl°naindnetiawir'isssi,
ho
alTolormhnt eio; al department,
pttwaholnaeoedryees.not well understood, and few of the colonies
f
were in a position to go to much expense for contri-
et
on unrepresented.
of the
dt
theAe
undertaking
Tuxadhh
eewi
rb
tohnit
atarookiy: ofinn tgreothah; of 1851
given
n 1 coloniesww aa ss
contri-
butions. Thus it was that out of the 23,500 feet of
horizontal space allotted to the British Colonies in
1851 only 6,180 were thinly occupied. The Indian
Court, it is true, made a grand display of rich and
gaudy wares, but the products and manufactures--
the material wealth, in short, of our gigantic colo-
nial possessions, were either inadequately repre-
sented or not represented at all. Now, all this will
be changed next year. The truth of the theory
of the development of these exhibitions showed
itself in the Paris Exhibition of 1853. Then our
colonies not only appreciated the objects of the Ex-
hibition, but what was more important, understood
what they had lost by being so imperfectly repre-
sented in 1851. The result was that at Paris, in
1853, there was a finer colonial display than in Lon-
don in '5l, and in the Exhibition of next year there
will be such a show of colonial products and manu-
factures as has never been gathered under one roof
before. All, even to our most distant dependencies,
are making such efforts to be well represented next
year as almost apparently to surpass the interest
taken in the scheme at home. The Canadian Go-
vernment has voted £B,OOO towards the expenses
of properly representing that grand colony ;
Cape Colony will give £5,000 ; British Columbia,
£2,000 ; Queensland, £2,000; Tasmania, £2,000 ;
New South Wales, £3,000, and £5,000 for an
exhibition of gold ; Victoria Aives £lO,OOO ; New
Brun wiok, -ZI,600; Britishi,Guiana, £l,OOO, and
proportionate sums will be voted by nearly all
the other colonial Legislatures throughout the world.
The idea of the gold exhibition of the Australian
colonies is an admirable one. For the first time
the English public will see a properly arranged and
classified exhibition of the various deposits of the
precious metal, the discovery of which has in ten
short years raised Australia from the position of an
outlying colony and convict depot to a series of
powerful and wealthy States. It is not to be a
mere display of nuggets; on the contrary, the
nuggets that are to be sent as specimens are to be
limited in weight to 6oz. It is to be a display not
only of the various forms in which the rich aurife-
rous yield is found, butoalso of all the machines
and implements by which it is worked at the dig-
gings. Thus there will be gold earth and gold sand,
with the methods of washing it, gold quartz of
every grade of richness, from 3oz, to the ton, till
the lumps of metal at last emerge in an eruption of
pure nuggets upon the surface of the earth. To-
wards this display New South Wales gives £5,000,
and the settlement of Victoria £5,000, with £5,000
more for the general purposes of exhibitors. Let
those who affect to complain that 10 years is too
short a space of time to intervene between those
Exhibitions think of this munificent grant of the
Victorian Legislature, and of the progress made by
that colony during the last decade. In 1851 Victoria
was just starting into existence as a distant colony.
Its population was then short of 80,0(10; it had
barely 60,000 acres of land under cultivation ; its
annual imports were barely a million, and its ex-
ports short of £1,400,000. Now its population is
nearly 700,000, its exports exceed in value 15 mil-
lions annually, and its imports are as large, while
more than 490,000 acres of land are under cultiva-
tion. The colonists own upwards of 7,000,000 head
of cattle, and have sent gold to the mother country
to the, value of £110,00,000 sterling. Nor is it
only in Victoria that we see this astounding pro-
gress in the 10 years that has intervened. Port
Phillip, which in 1851 had only just been erected
into a separate colony, is now the great settlement
of the group. Moreton Bay has within the last
two years become a great, prosperous, and indepen-
dent colony, under the name of Queensland ; Van
Diemen's Land no longer exists, but in its stead is
the wealthy and thriving settlement of Tasmania,
and even the beautiful Norfolk Islands are no more

the most dreaded of all penal settlements, but
have been colonised by the Pitcairn Islanders,
to whom a romantic interest still attaches
as the descendants of the mutineers of the Bounty,
who kept up their primitive simplicity and isolation

till they outgrew the limits of their first island
home. We live fast nowadays, and ten years is a
huge epoch in the rapid history of colonial enter-
prise and progress. There are now railways and
telegraphs to towns in Australia which 10 years ago
were only stations with sheep tracks through the
bush. Steamers are plying on the Murray. and the
Darling, and Queensland, British Columbia, and
Vancouver's Island have since the last Exhib:tion
been admitted into that greatfamily of communities
which constitute the gigantic empire of the British

colonies.
If there are any among the members of this sys-
tem of dependencies which show less zeal in the
Exhibition than the rest they are to be found among
the West Indian colonies. Sugar now and cotton
for the future seem not unnaturally to occupy all
their thoughts at present, and more interest is
evinced among the people of the Sandwich Islands,
at Hayti, in Japan, the South Sea Isles, the Fee-
jees, in Liberia, and along the settlements of the
West Coast of Africa, than among the inhabitants
of the greatest of the Antilles. Mr. R. Alcock is
sending home a superb collection of objects from
Japan, principally of China laquer ware and textile
fabrics, with scientific and agricultural implements,
raw products, &c. To this display her Maj esty will
contribute from the Windsor armoury the magnifi-
cent weapons and armour which were lately sent to
her as a present from the Tycoon. Our Indian em-
pire was last time represented by the display put
forth by the Company. This time Dr. F. Watson is
intrusted with gathering together a grand collection
of the staples of that great empire, and it is said
the collection will be one of the most valuable and
most varied that has
The Indian empire does not come within the space
assigned for the colonial display, but will, as in 1851,
evertnapplications,a brought
nn together.rae t.
have a separate court to itself. In all, 12,000 feet of
horizontalaleralssproper.etstwice
h e
j custlpdha agamcti eno
augmhr
faorsfuoonm h b
been et e
i more e
ns
demanded
present ee
given uproom, d
yet
to a
nthe e
expected,
coloniespeet
ed,
and the
enlarge
havethe areadepended
p eant
afirst
has decided
been a
or n
t. On t
o
m oarl
el sidesthan
The
theory
ofdevelopment Commissioners
apponarwenhtileyhwthilel Commis-
sionershe
her
realised, yet, as their belief in the theory has not
taken the practical form of erecting a building large
enough to meet what they rightly said would be
the increased demand, it necessarily follows that a
numerous minority of the late applicants will be
disappointed altogether. There is not one-fourth
more space for the exhibitors than in 1851, yet
about 10 times the amount is wanted. England
alone has sent in demands which amount to twice
the contents of the whole structure, and France
complains that she has about a tenth of the space
required for what she wrist exhibit.
Of all our large cities, Dublin seems the most
apathetic on the subject, as compared with its size
and importance ; but few applications heave yet
come in, and none whatever will be entertained
after the 30th of this month. The 12th c f Febru-
aryhe exhi-
next has been fixed on as the date wand the
bitors may begin to send in their objects.,
Commissioners will receive them from h
.
the end of March. After March nothing whatever
will be admitted either from home or abroad, no
matter from what cause the delay he eve arisen.
There will be thus one
clear month, during which
of the building can
those in charge p roceed unin-
terruptedly in the proper arrangemew t and display
of the works of art and manufactures,. jf this rule
is strictly adhered to there is no fear. of a, repetition
of the hurry, confusion, and inif half •
she a state in
the midst of which the E • • xhibition of 1851 was
opened.