The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-10 00:00:00

MEMOIR OF THOMAS HENRY ROCKER.

The following. particulars respecting Thomas Henry
locker, who stands charged with the wilful murder
of the late Mr. Delarue, at Hampstead, have not before
been published.
Thomas Henry locker was born in the month of May,
1823, and will consequently be twenty-two years of age,
in May next. lie received his education in the school
belonging to Christ Church, situated in Richmond-
street, Edgware-road, and being a sharp forward boy,
was much noticed as an apt and ready scholar, and in
extreme youth was remarkable for his well-knit and
muscular frame, which gave him great strength. He
subsequently went to Sheffield, where, through the kind
interference of a friend, he succeeded in procuring a
situation in one of the schools in that town ; and while
residing there, paid his addresses to an amiable your g
lady of the name of Batty, with whom he has since
boasted, he used to ride about in her parent's carriage,
and whose letters to Hocker are now in the hands
of the police, having been found in his lodgings at the
time of his apprehension. In fact, it is be-
lieved, that he has been corresponding with Miss
Batty up to the time of the murder, notwithstanding
that he was at the same time paying his addresses to
Miss Sarah Jane Philps, the young lady examined at
the inqu-st. While at Sheffield Hocker led a very gay
life, and his continual demands for money on his father
caused his parent to apply for advances from loan
societies, which has since occasioned him considerable
embarrassment. About two years since Hocker was
obliged to leave Sheffield, and having no other resource
returned to his father, who then resided at No. 5,
Charles-street, Portland Town, from which time he has
led an idle and dissolute life, not untaintod by crime, his
principal occupation having been the deluding- of
females, and the meeting of the deceased Delarue in
the fields, for, it is believed, the worst of purposes.
His father having supported him for several months,
and being much straitened in circumstances, fre-
quently remonstrated with him on his extreme idleness,
as ho often continued in bed until the middle of the
day. These quarrels at length grew high, and on one
occasion Thomas hooker made an attack on his father
with such brutality that Mr. hooker had two severe
black eyes, and was so bruised all over that he was un-
able to leave the house during a whole fortnight, After
that occurrence, through the intervention of friends,
matters went on more smoothly between him and his
father, and since Mr. Hocker removed to his present re-
sidence, about fifteen months since, the prisoner has
been known to render some slightassistance in the ladies'
shoemaking business. There was, however, still a
great difficulty in getting him out of bed in the morning,
so much so that another serious quarrel arose between
him and his father on the Ist of August last, when he
slept for three nights in the fields near to the very spot
where the murder of Mr. Delarue was perpetrated. On
the following night the landlord of the house in which
the father resides went with James Hooker, the
brother, to that dreary spot, for the purpose of offering
him a bed; but he evaded their search, and, after tra-
versing the dark Bellsize-lane without finding him,
on their return they met two policemen, whom
they told of the circumstance, giving them a descrip-
tion of Thomas locker's person, and requesting them,
should they see him going towards the spot to sleep, to

tell him to come to 17, Charles-street, as the landlord
wished to see him. They did see him, and he did go
to his father's residence ; hut when the ab we offer was
made to him, he spurned it with contempt. About that
time it was that Mr. Delarue was robbed in the Regent's-
park, by, it is said, a female and two men, the former
first accosting him, and the Litter holding him while the
robbery was committal ; and it is believed that the
watch, the duplicate of which was found at the lodgings
of Thomas Hocker, is the identie it watch of which Mr.
Delarue was on that occasion robbed. About the same
time Thomas 'locker was seen to be in the possession of
several sovereigns, which he alleged Mr. Delarue had
presented to him. The next evening Mr. locker's
landlord met Thomas locker at Primrose-hill, when the
latter consented to accompany him to the house of Mrs.
Carter, No. 19, Charles-street, where he remained three
weeks. At the expiration of that time, his mother took
for him an empty room at No. 4, Charles-street, St.
John's Wood- terrace, where he remained, going home
daily to his meals, until his removal to No. 11, Victoria-
terrace, where he was apprehended.
There is not a shadow of doubt that the alleged
murderer, during his intimacy with Mr. Delarue, had
received from his victim the sum of nearly 150/., the
whole of which he had squandered in vice and debauchery,
and that he was well aware that a stop was about to be
put to his career, and that his victim would no longer
submit to his importunate demands. There is no doubt
that he had deliberately made up his mind to enforce
those demands at every risk, even of sacrificing life, in
proof of which there may be adduced the fact of his
having told the story three weeks before of having lost
the thick and massive stick which he brought with him
from Sheffield, and which has just been found ; and that
most probably,on Mr. Delarue refusing him more money,
he instantly felled him to the ground with the stick in ques-
tion, following up his blows with kicks wail he had do•
privt d his victim of life.
Much has been said in the daily papers respecting
suspicions as to other persons having been concerned in
the perpetration of the murder. We can confidently
state that no such suspicions have ever been entertained
by the police authorities.

THE GAME-LAYS' COMMITTEE
(From the .League.)
. . .

The recent appointment of a Select Committee to
inquire into the operation of the game-laws, forms,
undoubtedly, an epoch in the history of British
agriculture. It is the first tenant-farmers' Committee.
It is an inquiry which tenant-farmers, to a man,
desire should be full, searching, and complete; and
it is one which nine landholders out of ten, takin
the country through, would have resisted if they had
dared, and will, if they can, render as imperfect and
inconclusive as possible. For the first time in British
history have the farmers made their own, their real
voices heard in the Legislature. There have been
Select Committees without number to inquire into
agricultural distress, but they have only been in-
tended to ascertain how reductions of rent could be
avoided without making the farmers their own mas-
ters. The agricultural Committee of 1836 disclosed
the fact that all the legislation by which for two and
twenty years landlords had professed to benefit the
farmers, had only enhanced the proprietor's rent at
the expense of the tenant's capital. From that moment
the political landlords became the most energetic op-
ponents of all inquiries into the existence and causes
of agricultural distress. It was, therefore, with some-
thing like surprise that the concession of a Committee
to inquire into the game-laws was received by the
public.
'Writing as a farmer to farmers, we shall not
waste a line on the supererogatory task of showing
that the game-laws constitute one of the greatest
and most hopeless burdens by which, amongst many
others, the tenant-farmers are oppressed. That is
an agricultural axiom. Nobody denies it, except
such madcap reasoners as Mr. Grantley Berkeley,
who unconsciously demonstrate just the contrary of
that . they wish to prove, having all the value of
most unwilling witnesses. There is no doubt that
the inquiry will he an effective one. But we ask
the tenantry of Great Britain how this has been
brought about ? Has it originated with the " Cen-
tral Society for the Protection of British Agricul-
ture 7" Is it due to the indomitable perseverance
of Mr. William Miles or Mr. George Bankes ?
Does it result from influence, the disinterested in-
fluence of the Duke of Richmond at the Treasury ?
Has the Duke of Buckingham at length proved him-
self in deed as well as in name the " farmers'
friend ?" To each of these queries every farmer must
say, no! no ! There is not a man amongst the warts
protectionists, the self-designated " farmers' friends,"
who would not have shirked or burked the inquiry
if he could. Fancy the faces of the eighty squire-
archal Members of the House of Commons who as-
sembled at Sir Robert Peel's on the morning of
the day when the Committee waa agreed to
Imagine what they must have felt when plainly told
by the Prime Minister, doubtless in the blandest
terms, that an inquiry into game-laws and game-
preserving was inevitable ! How, then has all
this been brought about ? Hares, pheasants, and
rabbits, might have devoured the substance and
impoverished the family of every tenant farmer in the
kingdom, so long as rent could have been levied out
of his capital, before the landowners would have
moved in furtherance of such an inquiry. Who,
then, has proved to be the "farmers' friend ?" No
other than John Bright, one of the dreaded cham-
pions of false League. The efforts of the League
throughout the country, and the tact, eloquence, and
intellectual power of a few Free-Traders in Parlia-
ment, have obtained this first instalment of justice
for the tenant-farmers. They, whose very names
have been used by the monopolist landowners to
scare the tenantry from all investigation of the
causes of agricultural depression, have been the
only public men who have ever obtained a public
measure unquestionably advantageous
,to the class of
tenant-farmers. His Grace of Richmond made ap-
parently a great stir for the sake of the farmers, but
it all ended in a seat at the Treasury for his own
brother. Buckingham's devotion to the cause of the
suffering' agriculturists has procured him a blue
rihand and a diamond bauble for himself. While
Miles and Bankes are talking of making sham
motions—at the very mention of which even the land-
owning House of Commons laughs outright, and by
which they know they can get nothing but a minority
of about seventy or eighty of the most imbecile
Members in the Ifouse—Bright the Leaguer obtains
a Committee on the Game Laws with the lip ap-
proval of those who, by that inquiry, will be put upon
their trial.

Farmers, who are your friends ? Are those who
delude you with false promises and illusory expecta-
tions, or are those who, telling you some home truths,
go at once to a practical examination of your admitted
grievances, your real friends ?
The most rabid monopolists begin to note this as a
sign of the times. Thus the New Farmer's Journal
says:—

" We sincerely rejoice in the appointment of the Com-
mittee, and, although by no means disposed to deny Mr.
Bright his full share of credit for having obtained it, we
may perhaps be pardoned for expressing our regret that
the matter was not first taken up by some agricultural
representative. Are we also to be indebted to a free
trader for a committee of inquiry into the causes of the
present distressed state of agriculture ?"

As surely as the game-law inquiry was obtained by
the exertions of the Free-Traders, so certainly will
any effective inquiry into the " distressed state of
agriculture " be procured by means of the League.
So the Morning Post :

In districts where the rural peasantry are suffering
from want of employment and destitution, it is mere
madness to suppose that the game-preserving system can
be kept up by severity of law. If men be idle and
hungry, they certainly will attempt to catch the wild
animals on which they may feed. Let proprietors, there-
fore, look carefully to the condition of the people on their
estates, and try to give them something better to do than
poaching,"
And what makes men idle in the rural districts,
but the slovenly cultivation induced by the corn-laws
and game-laws, and the consequent vassalage of
yearly tenant-farmers ?
The great object of farmers now must be to make
the inquiry as complete as possible, and the best
mode of doing so will be for those farmers who
have had opportunities of noticing the evils caused
by game-preserving and the game-laws—and what
farmer has not had far, far too many such ?—to
communicate to Mr. Bright, as chairman of the
Committee, the substance of the evidence they can
give. Witnesses summoned by the Committee will
have their expenses paid ; so that, by the devotion of
a few hours to this most important question, farmers
may help to remove the most cruel remnant of feudal
barbarism by which they and their labourers are op-
pressed and degraded. Farmers should come pre-
pared to show the whole bearings of the game-laws,
for already are there indications that the squires
think of giving up their special law as regards hares
and rabbits, and retaining it for the preservation of
pheasants and partridges. But this will never do.
Hares and rabbits are at present more complained of
than pheasants and partridges, because they are a
degree, only a degree, less destructive. The
minor is sunk in the major. But what is
the fact ? We knew that overwhelming evi-
dence of the vast injury done to grain crops,
in every stage from seed time to harvest, by pheasants
in particular, will be offered to the Committee ; and
we know also that farmers and their men will be sub-
ject to espionage and entrapment by gamekeepers 93
much for the sake of winged as of four-footed game.
The abolition of the game laws must be entire, and if
the farmers who give evidence will state all the facts
within their knowledge the result of the inquiry must
be the TOTAL REPEAL OF ALL GAME-LAWS. Now
is an occasion when farmers clubs should he rendered
realities by the introduction of this topic, and by de-
puting some one of their body to give evidence before
the Committee. Farmers must begin to think and
act for themselves. They should form societies to
discuss their real grievances, and they should support
each other in firm and business-like demands for their
removal. There is no other body of capitalists who
would submit to be devoured in detail as the farmers
have been by the rent-loving landlords ; and nothing