The Sun.
London, England, 1850-04-25 00:00:00

THURSDAY EVENING,

DREADFUL MURDERS.

The pleasant market tow of Otley, iu the valley
of the NVharle, about ten miles train Leeds, in the
direct line cf road between Harrogate and Belton-
abbey, has just been the scene (la most diabolical out-
rage, in which one man's life was instantly-
and six or seven other persons were stabbed, including
a married woman, who lies in a very precarious state
from the wound inflicted upon her. The circumstances
are as follow :—For some time past a number of men
have been employed in making a reservoir for the
supplying of a woollen-cloth manufactory with water,
at a place called Burley-wood-head, on a high bar-
ren tract of land known by the name of Rombald's-
moor, upcn a portion of which is situated the well-
known Ben Raydding hydropathic establishment.
Five sr six of these men, generally known by the
name of " navvies," were drinking on S iturday after,
nooa and evening at the Red Lion public-house,
O.ley, kept by Henry Roundel!. Tney left that
house quietly, about twelve o'clock at Light,
worse for liquor, but app,.rently quite able to
know what they wire doing. Soon after they
had got out of the house is appears they stole
a live fowl from Reundell's premise., and after they
had turncd into a Arca or road called Westgate,
which leads towards Burley-wood-head, where
some of the men lodged, they wilfully commenced
breaking the windows t f some of the inhabitants.
Same thus broke lea throwing stones through them,
and otters by striking ad them with their fists, utter -
ieg at the same time brutal threats against the in-
ratites of the houses. Two of the party appear to
have gone quo tly home, and the four now charged
with the wilful mu der remained behind breaking
windows. The noise occasioned by the smashing and
falling of the glass attracted the attention of Henry
Thornes, a clerk in the post-office, who lives in West-
gate. He went out of the house with his slippers on,
walked lup to three of the men, and calmly asked
them to pay for the windows they had broken, but
they refused, doubling their fists and Tutting them in
Thornes's face, with a threat to pay with physical force.
A man named Ives, whom Thornes had met on the road,
was present, and one of the men, afterwards identi-
fied as George Towleston, struck Ives over the mouth
with his hand, which caused his mouth to bleed a
little. As soon as Ives felt the blow he struck
Towleston over the head with his walking-stick with
such force as to inflict a wound, and knock the
man down. When this was' done, Thornes and
Ives ran away, pursued by two of Towleston's
companions, who uttered the most violent im-
precations, but soon gave up running. The
noise of the disturbance caused two women,
named Mrs. Dickinson and Mrs. Kershaw, to go
to the doors of their houses to see what was the
matter, and at the same time Mrs. Dawson, the wife
of Robert Dawson, a neighbour of the other women,
went to the door to throw some water out, in a me-
ment or two after which she was followed by her
husband, and a navvy carne along the street break-
ing the windows of one of the houses. As soon as he
got to where the women, Robert Dawson, and Towle-
stein were, Dawson asked him if be knew what he
had been doing; but, instead of giving bins an answer,
the man dragged Dawson into the street and com-
menced using him with great violence. Mrs. Dawson,
seeing her husband ill-used amid another navvy going
up, ran a short distance to a public-house fur some
assistance. She was only away a few minutes, but
before her return her husband's brother, John Dawson,
who lived only about 40 yards off, had run out cf his
house in his trousers and shirt to his brother's assist-
ance, and had been stabbed in the right thigh by one of
the navvies, and was lying dead on the steps of his own
door. She also found that her husband had received.a
deep cut in his cheek, that Mrs. Dickinson had been
stabbed in the thick part of the thigh, and a daughter
of Mrs. Kershaw, about 15 years of age, had been
stabbed in one of her shoulders. It would appear,
indeed, that two or three of the enraged brutes ran
about with knives in their hands, stabbing or threaten-
ing to stab all persons they came near. One of them
actually attempted to cut a young man's throat
when he was looking at the dead body of John
Dawsor, but the young man got away from
him. In a short time, after information of
the murder having been conveyed to some
men who were at the White Horse Hotel, four or
five persons (constables and others) set off in pursuit
of the perpetrators of the barbarous outrages. They
were overtaken about half a mile from Otley, on the
road to Bradford, and after a desperate resistance, in
which they inflicted with knives some severe wounds
upon two or three of their captors, three of the
villains were secured and placed in custody, and
the fourth was apprehended. not very far off, on the
following day. On Monday afternoon an inquest was
held on the body of the deceased John Daaeon be-
fore Mr. Brown, coroner, at the White Horse kotel,
Utley. The deceased was a very steady, sober man,
aged 28. lie was unmarried, and lived with his
father, and was a sawyer. The wound which
caused his death was at the upper part of the
right thigh, where the ft moral artery and the
first branch from it were cu,, as if with a stab
irons a knife. The jury, after the examination
of twenty witnesses, returned a verdict of
Wilful Murder" against the four prisoners, who
;;eve their names Gorge 'Towleston, Robert Farrar,
Nathaniel Scholey, and William Jaques. The
Coroner made out his warrant, and they were all
committed to York Castle to take their trials at the
next assizes.
Three of the prisoners, it is said, belong to Wake-
field, and the fourth (Jaques) is a Lincolnshire man,
but he married a Wakefield woman. They are from
thirty to forty years of age, and their countenances,
more or less, are of a villancus cast, whilst their
faces bear marks of hard usage and dissolute habits.
Knives were found in the possession of three of the
prisoners, and one knife had blood upon it.
Mrs. Kershaw, the woman who was stabbed and
now lies in in a precarious state, is the wife of a
shoemaker. She is about thirty years of age, and has
four children, one being an infant at the breast.