The Sun.
London, England, 1842-11-08 00:00:00

AN AERIAL STEAM CARRIAGE.

This is the name which has been given to a new
machine, for which a Company has taken out a
patent, and which is to convey passengers, goods, and
dispatches through the air, performing the journey
from London to India in four days ! and to travel at
the rate of from 75 to 100 miles per hour.
At the first glance of such an announcement our
readers will doubtless feel disposed to treat it as some
chimerical absurdity, written merely to excite wonder
and expressly for the marvel-loving mass of society ;
but the facts connected with the subject are of a kind
to diminish disbelief, at least as to the truth of such
a contrivance being in process of formation. A com-
pany of gentlemen is really formed even of mechanical
men : the patent was formally sealed on the 29th
of September last, and systematic arrangements are
in progress to complete the design. At least this
would prove that the inventors and their supporters
are well convinced of the certainty of their invention ;
and, wonderful as may appear this announced stride
in science, we may surely pause in our incredulity
when we remember with what unbelief the proposi-
tion to light the metropolis with an invisible fluid was
received—and when we know that seventy years since
we should have been deemed madmen if we had
stated that we should thereafter travel at the rate of
forty to sixty miles an Lour. In such an age
of improvement, we really have no right or
precedent, to deny the possibility of this mea-
sure, and, therefore, we allude as we do to the fad
of such a steam-carriage being, not only cont-m-
-plated, but in the engineer's hands, to be borne on the
' air, unlike the principle of the balloon, and to which
even the winds are to be made subservient!

The subject is one so replete with matter for spe-
culation, that we will not venture to point out the
consequences which would occur—still, not denying
the rapid transit to be practicable, and even likely to
be carried into operation ; but in January the ma-
chine will be thoroughly organised, and until then
we take leave of the subject, and only trust that this
alleged invention is neither exaggerated, nor an
Utopian project ; and from the conversation we had
wit;; those in connexion with the design, we have every
reason to believe that neither is the case.—Atlas.

HORRIBLE JNFANTICIDES.
SIX INFANTS INIURDBRED BY THEIR

INIOTIIER.

We have this week the painful duty of recording
a case of long continued and inhuman depravity
almost unparalleled In the annals of crime. It ap-
pears that a woman named Frances Bennett, residing
at Ruardean-hill, in the Forest of Dean, being very
ill, and probably fearing to die with the undivulged
guilt of murder upon her conscience, commu-
nicated to the Reverend Henry Formby, -curate
of Ruardean, that about twelve months since
she became the mother of a child by a
man named Thomas Yapp, with whom she has been
cohabiting for about eight or ten years, which child,
after it had lived a few days, she destroyed by poi-
soning it, after which she and Yapp buried it be-
neath the pavement of the brewhouse. The wretched
woman further added that she had been the mother
of five other children by the same man, all of whom
she had murdered at their birth, and with Yapp's
assistance had buried their bodies at separate spots
beneath the floor of the brewhouse, and near a barn
adjoining her cottage.
These horrid confessions seemed, from their unex-
ampled atrocity, to be more like the ravings of deli-
rium than truth ; but upon information being given to
the police, and a search being made in the spots indi-
catedby the unnatural woman, the skeletons of her six
murdered offspring were all found, and stamped truth
upon a tale much too horrid else for belief. Upon this
Yapp was taken into custody, and a policeman, we
believe, remained to take charge of the woman, who
repeated her confession to her sister and afterwards to
the policeman, Fowler. The facts were intimated
to J. Cook, Esq., and a warrant was issued for sum-
moning a jury to hold an inquest. By this time, how-
ever, the woman, Frances Bennett, had recovered in
a measure the hardihood of her character; and on
the inquest, which was held on Tuesday last she
positively denied that she had ever given birth to
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were 21wthdeeirnre made to him in his spiritual capacity, he must
decline to divulge them. After, without effect, en-
deavouring to prevail upon .Mr. Formby to state all
that the woman had told him, and after unavailing re-
monstrances against the withholding of evidence, the
Coroner left the point as it stood, and passed on to the
examination of the sister of Frances Bennett, whose
evidence was to the effect that on Saturday last,
October 29, she was with her sister, who had been
in a weak state of health for some time, and had
been confined to her bed for about a week ; that before
Mr. Formby called, her sister made an alarm, and ex-
claimed that she would have her dead children dug up
and buried in the churchyard. She said that immedi-
ately after the infants were borii she held them under
water till they were dead, and that then she and
Yopp buried them. She added that the last of the
six children was not served in this way, but lived for
two days; and that it was weakly, and she gave it
some arsenic and it died ; that Yapp was
very sorry when he found this child was
dead, and said he would not have lost it
for fifty pounds ; and that they both toge-
ther buried the child in the brewhouse. At this
stage of the proceedings it was thought advisable to
adjourn the inquiry, in order to afford opportunity
fbr further and more deliberate inquiry into the cir-
cumstances of this mysterious and very extraordinary
case, and the inquest was accordingly adjourned till
Wednesday the 9th instant.

During the performance of the musical mass, on
Sunday, 30th ult., in the Church of the Madeleine,
Paris, the congregation, which was unusually crowded
was suddenly disturbed by the arrest of two young
and well-dressed men, who, while pretending to be
seriously attentive to the service, were detected by
the police on duty in the act of plcking the pocket of
a gentleman of a valuable gold snuff-box.