The Sun.
London, England, 1868-03-28 00:00:00

LAW AND POLICE,

ALLEGED AIANSLAUGHTER.—At the Norwich Assizes,
Susan Roof, an attendant at the Norwich Lunatic Asylum,
has been charged with feloniously killing Susan Calvin!
The deceased, who was an inmate of the asylum, applied
to the prisoner for a black draught, and, with Roof's
permission, she went to a cupboard to get it. She,
however, took a bottle containing carbolic acid by mis-
take, and died about two hours afterwards from swallow-
ing a portion of the contents. The bottle containing
the carbolic acid was labelled " poison," but the deceased
could not read. The bottles containing the carbolic acid
and the black draught were very similar in appearance.
Tile charge against the prisoner was based on her alleged
negligence in allowing the deceased to help herself to
medicine, instead of administering it to her herself, as
prescribed by the rif.es of the asylum. The jury, however
acquitted the prisoner.

DnrnAuDrsc AN INSURANCE COMPANY.-At the Liver-
pool Assizes, Julia Regan was charged with feloniously
causing a false entry of the death of Catherine Regan to
be inserted in the register of deaths for the district of St.
Martin, Liverpool, and also with uttering a certified
copy of the same. The prisoner was charged
under the 36th section of 24th and 25th Victoria,
cap. 98, and it appeared from the evidence of
several officers of the Liver Friendly Burial Society that
Catherine Regan was entered. as a member of that
society, and any person producing a certificate of her
death would become entitled to 23. The prisoner pro-
duced to the cashier of the society a certificate of death,
which had been obtained by telling the doctor that a girl
named Regan, whom he had attended for bronchitis, had
since died, whereupon he granted his certificate without
actually seeing the body (a course which the learned judge
condemned as very unsafe), and therebyobtained the sum
in question. The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Sen-
tence deferred.

ALLEGED WIFE MURDER.—At the same assizes, Mr.
Justice Mellor had before him Richard Phythian, who was
charged with the wilful murder of his wife Mary Phythian,
at Eccleston, on the 2nd of January last. It appeared
that the prisoner and his wife, together with his brother
and wife and several friends, were drinking together on
New Year's night, at a public-house. They left at mid-
night and went to the brother's house, where the deceased
became sick and ill from drink, and was taken home
by a woman named Seddon. As soon as Mrs. Seddon
returned the prisoner started off home, very drunk
indeed, and nothing more was seen of either until
the prisoner called them up at his brother's house at six
o'clock in the morning, and told them that his wife was
dead. On going to the house they found the deceased
sitting in her chair, dressed with the exception of her cap,
quite dead, and the floor of the room covered with pools
of blood. There was no blood in any other part of the
house, but there were slight traces on the prisoners' boots
and on the bed-clothes. The prisoner said he did not know
what had happened, but when he came down in the morn-
kg he found his wife in the chair dead, and the house covered
with blood. The deceased, who was in the family-way, died
from hemorrhage, which must have been instant and exces-
sive, and which was produced by a lacerated contused wound,
which it was said must have been the result of violence.
The evidence of the doctor was that a kick would be very
probable violence to produce it, while there was nothing
in the room which in his opinion could have caused it, and
it was put for the prosecution that the prisoner must in his
drunkenness have so caused it. No one besides the pri-
soner and the deceased were in the house during the night,
and voices were heard by the next-door neighbour in the
middle of it, but nothing in the way of screams. Instead
of being a violent man, the prisoner was shown to have
always been most kind to his wife, and to have lived happily
with her during the eight years they had been married.
The defence was that there was no direct evidence what-
ever that the injury was produced by a kick, or by the
prisoner at all, and that the doctor might be wrong in his
impression that the room contained nothing which could
have produced it. For instance, if the sofa had been at
one time tilted on one side, so as to have a projecting leg,
against which the deceased had fallen, it might have been
so produced. His lordship said to the jtlry that this case
was at the most manslaughter, and .the jury, without
hesitation, acquitted the prisoner altogether.