The Sun.
London, England, 1868-02-29 00:00:00

CAPTURE OF A BURGLAR.

At the Woolwich Police-court, John Adams, aged 38,
of 27, Ordnance-road, Woolwich-common, was charged
with burglariously entering the mansion of Sir James
Wilde (judge of the Divorce Court) at Shooter's-hill, and
also with committing burglaries at about a dozen other
gentlemen's residences in the same locality. He was fur-
ther charged with cutting and wounding P.C. Lincoln,
146 R, on the latter's attempting to arrest him. The pri-
toner is a most desperate and successful burglar, and
within the two years he has been out on a ticket-of-leave,
it is believed, from the proceeds of burglaries found
at his house, that he cannot have had less than an income
of £5OO a year derived from his midnight depredations.
He has on several occasions been detected by the police in
the act of committing burglaries, but by the use of fire-
arms and knives has managed to escape. On one occa-
sion he successfully escaped from a force of five constables,
and has never hesitated to resort to the most desperate
and murderous acts rather than be made a prisoner.
He has endergone eight years' penal servitu,l- for a
burglary Deptford, and at the time of his . est by
the Shooters-hill police his ticket of leave had not expired.
He has been in the habit of reporting himself and re-
ceiving help from the Prisoners' Aid Society, and was
dressed in their clothing at the time of his capture. Within
the last two years almost every house on Shooter's-hill has
been entered, from that of Lord Truro down to the
labourer's cottage, and it will be proved in evidence that
the prisoner had broken into three or four houses in one
night, and he had latterly become the terror of the district.
Inspector Monahan said there were a great many charges
of burglary against the prisoner, but he only proposed going
into the case of Sir J. Wilde that day, and then to ask for
a remand.—Police-constable Lincoln said that he and
another constable named Billham, 57 It, stopped the pri-
soner as he was making off through a field with the proceeds
of the burglary committed at Sir James Wilde's. As a pre-
cautionary measure witness rubbed him down, and took a
knife from one of his pockets, when the prisoner threw
away the stolen property. Billham was in the act of going
to pick up the bundle, when the prisoner drew forth
another knife which he had secreted about him, and dis-
abled witness by slashing it across his hands several times,
and ran off into Shooters-hill-wood, in the darkness and
intricacies of which he escaped. They secured the proceeds
of the burglary, and circulated a description of the burglar.
Police constable Carr, 232 R, said he received a description
of the prisoner, and the previous night came upon him at
the Star public-house, Plumpstead Common. Witness
told him the charge against him, when the prisoner, taken
aback at the suddenness of the arrest, exclaimed, " Good
God ! " Knowing the dangerous character of the pri-
soner, he instantly threw him on his back, and held him
down until assistance arrived, the prisoner meantime
making a desperate resistance. He said he would be if
he would go, and a female with him, named Mary Ann
Brown, with whom he had been cohabiting, tried to rescue
him, and told the policeman to be aware of what he had
got in his pockets. Having got the prisoner to the station,
he ran to the prisoner's house, and arrived there before the
woman, and brought away a cart-load of property and
sixty-seven duplicates relating to articles which there is no
doubt will turn out to be the proceeds of burglaries. On
hastily looking over the things, the police identified
articles belonging to about a dozen cases of burglaries
committed in the Shooter's-hill subdivision. The female
Brown, finding the house stripped, went to the Shooter's-
hill Police-station, where she was at once placed under
arrest. Mr. Patteson remanded the prisoners, both of
whom are most forbidding and desperate - looking
characters.

1 LAW'AND POLICE.

ST. JOHN'S HOSPITAL—An application was made six
weeks ago to Vice-Chancellor Stuart for an order, under
the provisions of the Act of the reign of Queen Anne, upon
the lessee of some property in Gloucestershire, held of this
charity for the life of a person alleged to be living,to produce
him to the steward of the charity at the principal door of
the parish church of Cirencester, on the 14th of the present
month. That order not being complied with, an applica-
tion was made on Friday that this person should be pro-
duced at the bar of the court on the 18th of March next,
and if not that it should be assumed that he was dead for
the purposes of this application. The Vice-Chancellor
made the order asked.
THE CASE OF BURKE, CASEY, AND SHAW. —An appli-
cation was made to Mr. Justice Smith, at Warwick, on
behalf of Burke, to make an order on the prosecution to
give the prisoner a copy of the indictment, a list of the
witnesses, and a list of the jury panel. The application
was made under a, statute passed in the year of Queen Anne,
An Act passed in the reign of George 111. enacted that to
levy war against his Ma jesty, or to incite any person to invade
the realm—the acts with which Burke stands charged—
should be deemed treason. The statute was repealed by
the Treason Felony Act, which enacts that such an
offence shall be felony. The statute of Ann was, how-
ever, not repealed, and no mention was made of it in the
Treason Felony Act.—His lordship said that a similar
application was once made before Chief Justice Erie, who
held that it could not be granted in a case in which only
a felony was charged. His lordship was of the same
opinion.

ILL-TREATIES'I TO A CHILD.—HEAVY SENTENCE.—At
the Central Criminal Court, Mrs. Radelyffe, said to be
the wife of a respectable shopkeeper, was tried for a series
of brutal assaults upon Susan Russell, aged 13, who was
in her service as maid-of-all-work. The learned counsel
for the prosecution, in opening the case to the jury, said
that the prosecutrix was a young girl, and she was
employed as servant of all work by the prisoner and her
husband, and the offence alleged against the former by
the present indictment was, that on the 12th January
she kicked the prosecutrix in a most brutal manner,
and when she was examined by the surgeon at the hos-
pital her body was found to be covered with bruises all
over, and she was in a most terrible condition, from which
she was at present far from recovered. He was bound to
say that, according to his instructions, the prisoner had
been guilty of the most brutal conduct towards this unfor-
tunate girl. She was kicked and beaten with a thick
stick until she bled, and when she cried the prisoner
threatened to beat her until she was quiet. Upon one
occasion the prisoner threw a quantity of boiling water
over her and burned her severely. It was contended for
the defence that the case had been grossly exaggerated.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the prisoner
was sentenced to five years' penal servitude.
WITCHCRAFT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—Maria
Giles, widow, better known as " The Cunning Woman of
Newbury," and William Tranter, described in the calendar
as a labourer, were indicted at the Reading Assizes, before
Mr. Justice Keating, with obtaining various sums of
money from Isaac Rivers, by false pretences, on various
days in January. It was a case of pretended witchcraft.
The chief evidence was that of the prosecutor, who de-
tailed various occasions on which he had paid visits to the
woman for the purpose of recovering a stolen watch, and
described the pretended methods of witchcraft which
she had employed, and stated the various sums of
money which she and the male prisoner had demanded
for that end. Altogether Rivers had paid the sum of
£2 6s. 6d., though he admitted that the watch was only
worth 22 14s. Being asked by the learned judge " when
he first became aware how great a fool he had been," he
said it was on one occasion when the man and woman had
gone away with a sum of money just given, and had left
him sitting in their hut more than half an hour without
returning. The prisoner Giles pleaded guilty, and was
sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. Tranter
was convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprison-
ment.

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MR. GRAVES'S PRINTS•--Another printscller was on
r'riday brought before Alderman Sir R. Carden, charged
with pirating certain engravings, the property of Mr.
Graves. Fifty cases having been proved, prisoner was
fined £250, of fifty weeks' imprisonment.

PERVERSTONS.—On Saturday last a clergyman
of the English Church (one of the curates of St. George's-
in the-East) was received into the Catholic Church at
Farm-street, and two other curates of the same church
were also received the previous week at the church in
Great Tower-street, These gentlemen make up the
number of eleven clergymen of the Establishment who
have become Catholics between Ash-Wednesday 18(57 and
the same day in 1868. Weekly Register.

THE OAKS COLLIERY.—Within the last week an
important circumstance connected with the above calamity
has come to light. The men at work in exploring the
mine at the latter end of last week got to the bottom of
the stone drift, which was being cut by blasting at the
time the disaster occurred. Since that time they have
been able to penetrate the drift itself, and have
found that the shot has blown through. At the
beginning of the week Mr. Dickinson, inspector for
East Lancashire, Mr. F. N. Warchl, the newly-
appointed inspector for South Yorkihire, and Mr.
Lowthorn, the recent inspector, all visited the pit and
descended the shaft along with Mr. Dymond, the inana-
ing partner, and Mr. pinto, the newly-appointed
viewer, and went to the place, which they examined, and
found thc.t the shot had blown through. It will be remem-
bered that at the inquest a great deal of time was spent in
hearing evidence as to this important point, the majority
of the witnesses believing that it had not blown through.
The main road leading to the cupola has been cleared for
a distance of from seventy to eighty yards, in which space
a pony has just been found and got out. The work at the
cupola progresses but slowly, on account of the wails
giY4lg way.