The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-12-27 00:00:00

Two, LADIES 6 &- r.—On Wednesday night a fire
broke out in the 'mune, of Mrs. Wilkinson, Wimpole-
street, Cavendish-square. The ladies were sitting on a
sofa near thefire-place of a front room on the first floor,
and the dress of one having come in contact with the bars
of the grate, the dress of both became immediately in
flames. The screams of the sufferers soon brought assist-
ance andthey were removed to the lower part of the pre-
mises, but both were so dreadfully burnt, about the arms
and other parts of their bodies that their lives are des-
paired of:
Imcurasz oar- PAY TO THE CITY PoLrcE.—The in-
crease of pay- for which the Chief Commissioner has so
long urgedlon the Court of Aldermen and the City Polk?.
Committee,. has at length been obtained. The rise is
general, and the scale is as follows :—lnspectors, from £2
ss. to £2.105..; sergeants, £1 4s. to £1 Bs.; first-class pri-
vates, £L 2s. to £1 4s. ; second ditto, £1 to £1 2s. The
inspector of the- reserve men is raised from £2 108 to £2
155.; and; the detectives from £1 ss. to £1 10s. The
change takes place on the Ist of January, 1851, after
which period, it is said, stringent regulations will be adopt-
ed as to,theprobationary men and new enrolments.
GRATE; YARD REGULA.T/0249.—There appears to have
been a misapprehension as to the origin and intention of
the burial-ground regulations issued by Viscount Pal-
merston, previous to his resignation.. They had been
announced' as, general regulations, intended to be applied
to all new-burial-grounds, but it is now stated that they
were simply drawn up for St. Margaret and St. John,
Westminster, the latter of which has already declined to
have a burial-ground under such restrictions, and it is
denied, moreover, that the regulations had the sanction of
the Home' Office. The mistake, if such it was, is strange,
and unaccountable; but whatever we may think of the
original statement, and of the version now given of the
affair, it- is pretty plain that no such regulations will be
enforced—John Bull.

LORD. PALMERSTON AND TEE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY.

—The lord mayor of London wrote to Lord Palmerston on
the subject of making Monday (yesterday) a holiday. In the
reply sent the following passage occurs :—" With regard
to the• public offices of the government, when Christmas-
day falls on a week day it is made a holiday, in order to
enable the persons employed in those departments to
attend to the religious observances belonging to that day ;
but as in the present year those observances will have
been duly attended to on the Sunday, the 25th, there does
not appear to Lord Palmerston to be any good reason why
the• public service of the country should be stayed and
impeded by a holiday in the government offices on Mon-
day, the 26th December, when there will be no religious
observances to attend to."

A Wixom? FAMILY POISONED.—On Thursday an in-
quest was held on the body of James George Trump, aged
six years, the son of a plasterer living in Prince's-road,
Bermondsey. The mother stated that on Monday the
family, consisting of herself, her husband, the deceased,
and a child, aged 17 months, dined off some hashed
mutton, over which a paste made of flour and water had
been poured. Soon after partaking of the meal, the whole
of the family except the youngest child, who had had
none of the paste, became very sick. In the night the
illness of the child increased so much that her husband
went to fetch a doctor, but before medical aid could arrive
the child had died. Witness had used flour out of the
same lot without experiencing any ill effects. The coroner
said it was a very mysterious case, and adjourned the
inquiry for further evidence.

ANOTHER COLLISION ON THE GREAT NORTHERN
RAILWAY.—On Wednesday morning another of these
. . .

accidents, involving a considerable destruction of pro-
perty, occurred at Peterborough. The night fast-goods
train from London to the North was entering the station
at about three o'clock, when it dashed into a coke train,
which was also coming into the station from the Eastern
Counties line. The shock was very violent. Consider-
able injury was done by it to both the engines and several
of the trucks of the two trains, but no person was parti-
cularly hurt, though the drivers and stokers of both
trains had an extremely narrow escape. The line was got
clear in the course of the morning, and a fresh train was
despatched with the merchandise after some delay. The
damaged trucks and engines were sent to Doncaster for
repair.

tIIRIVING OP A PAPER MILL.—On Saturday, a most
tremendous conflagration took place at Esher, on the
premises of Messrs. W. M'Murray and Co., about 18 miles
from London. The first intimation given was from a
drunken man, having called at the Washington-street
station about three o'clock in the morning, but, after re-
peated questions put to him, his authority was doubted.
However, the•foremen of the four districts of the London
Brigade met at the chief station, when, from the intelli-
gence received by that time from the London warehouses
of the firm in Queen-street, Cheapside, the dreadful de-
struction previously announced was proved to be too true.
It appeared that the engines from Richmond, Teddington,
Twickenham, Esher, and others from private resources,
were sent to the scene of the fire, awl, there being large
tanks of water at hand available for the use of those

attending the engines, every effort was attempted to stop
the progress of the flames ; but such was the inflammable
nature of the property that had ignited, and the fearful
progress made by the flames, that it was very improbable
that any portion of the great establishment could be
saved. The loss is supposed to be about £lO,OOO.

MunnEn ri.r LONDON.—On Saturday the neighbour-
hood of King-street, Soho, was thrown into a state of
excitement by the report that a man, living at No. 15,
had attempted to murderhis wife, and had then commit-
ted suicide. The man's name was Heise, a German, a
tin-plate worker, who lived with his wife and two children
in the attic. It appeared that his circumstances were
good, but he had strong feelings of jealousy against his
wife. The poor woman was confined only on Wednesday,
and Heise had become impressed with a conviction that
the child was not his. He frequently taunted her with
his suspicions, but she had no reason to suspect that he
meditated violence towards her. On Saturday night,
however, as she lay in bed with her infant at the breast,
he suddenly rushed into the room with a dagger-knife, of
the Italian form; and stabbed her in several places on the
left side and arm. She immediately jumped out of bed
and rushed out of the room, loudly calling out " Murder."
She dropped on the stairs from loss of blood. She was
removed to a room below, where she was immediately
attended to, and her wounds dressed. She was sub-
sequently removed to the 'Workhouse, with the infant,
which was drenched with blood. The man himself was
quite dead before the medical gentlemen arrived. On
entering his room a frightful scene presented itself. The
floor was a pool of blood, and Heise lay partially upon the
bed, his throat cut from ear to ear. He had nearly
severed the head from the body, with the exception of
the vertebrie ; both the carotid arteries, the windpipe,
and all the soft parts being cut through.
JuvExus DELINQUENCY.—A public meeting took
place at Birmingham ou Tuesday, for the purpose of pro-
moting the general establishment of reformatories for the
reception of destitute and criminal children. The body
of the hall was crowded, and the galleries were nearly
filled by a most respectable audience ; upwards of 3,000
persons were present. Sir J. Packington, having given
a brief sketch of the proceedings which had taken place
at the conference in the morning, and of the resolutions
which were then adopted, submitted to the meeting the
following resolution :—" That this meeting, having re-
ceived information of the proceedings of the conference
held thii day, in reference to the national treatment of
' morally destitute and criminal children,' expresses its
hearty concurrence with the resolutions which have been
adopted."—Mr. Adderley, M.P., seconded the resolution,
which was adopted.—The Earl of Harrowby proposed the
second resolution :—" That this meeting trusts that the
legislation which is held to be necessary for establishing
Industrial Reformatory Schools will encourage the en-
lightened and philanthropic managers of those institutions
maintained by voluntary alba, which have already
awakened public attention to the subject, and which ought
to be fostered and multiplied for the sake of the varied
and valuable experiences they are calculated to supply,
the individual zeal and interest they enlist, and the op-
portunity they present for the immediate adoption of
treatment towards criminal children, different from the
ordinary punishment of adults."—Mr. M. D. Hill, recor-
der of Birmingham, seconded the resolution, which was
agreed to.—Lord Lyttelton moved the following resolu-
tion :—" That the reformatories established privately in
this and other countries have been very successful, and
afford decisive proof of the practicability and fitness of the
mode of treatment of juvenile crime which they have
adopted." The noble lord expressed his opinion that refor-
matories should be established, if possible, by voluntary
efforts, under the sanction of the government, but that
if private liberality did not meet the requirements of the
case, it might be advisable that the government itself
should provide such institutions.—The resolution was
seconded by Mr. Woolrych Whitmore, and was adopted.
—On the motion Mr. R. M. Milnes, M.P., seconded by
the Hon. A. Kinnaird, M.P., the following resolution was
agreed to :—" that the petitions from this meeting be
preSented to both Houses of Parliament in favour of the
objects sought by the conference, and that such petitions
be signed by the chairman on behalf of the meeting ; and
that the noblemen and members of the House of Com-
mons now present be respectively requested to support
the prayer of such petitions, and that they be repectively
presented by the Earl of Shaftesbury and Sir John
Packington."—On the motion of Lord Calthorpe, seconded
by the Rev. S. Turner, a vote of thanks was passed to
the Earl of Shaftesbury for his conduct in the chair, and
the proceedings terminated.

hirors.—P;ofessor Sedgwick, in speaking, last week,
at the meeting held in the Town-hall, Cambridge, in
behalf of the Asylum for Idiots," among other anec-
dotes and statements of interest, narrated the following
Mental imbecility may arise from blighting or withering
up of certain faculties, still leaving other faculties belong-
ing to the mind of man capable of great development. It
is important, therefore, that those who are engaged in the
training of idiots should watch and see if any strength re-
main, that thereby they may develope such faculties as
are not destroyed. Having mentioned a case, in which all
the avenues of the mind were shut up, that had been suc-
cessfully treated, the rev. Professor said that that case was
different from those which this society contemplated gene-
rally. In that case there appeared to be no original
imbecility in regard to the constitution of the mind itself ;
it was only that the avenues to it were blocked up, so that
the mind could not get the raw material of thought to
mould to its own purposes. and uses. " I remember," said
the Professor, " that, when a boy,. I saw, in my native
town, a melancholy case of an idiot. Those around him
made sport of him, and mocked him, and he was treated
immorally by those who ought to have known better. Yet,
in those circumstances of moral and intellectual degrada-
tion, he had certain faculties in an extraordinary state of
perfection. His powers of calculation were most marvel-
lous, and he delighted in numbers, and answering compli-
cated questions; yet he knew nothing of arithmetic. He
could not write a single letter. He was brute in manner,
and he was brute in morals, so far as his perception in right
and wrong went. Well, a question was put to him, My

father spoke to a schoolniasterio try him in figures. Apr r-
WWI ['moo 04,dalrin coo. and the: wave tha Tr. ov. 41,

number of stitches on the needles, the expansion of the calf
of the leg, the contraction of the heel, and the peculiar for-
mation of the foot, and asked him to work out the number
of stitches ! I saw him sit down as one in a mental
agony, and his features puckered up in thought. He went
on, and at last gave the number of stitches very near the
Mark. If this man had been taught in the manner spoken
of by the Rev. Mr. Sidney and Dr. Conolly, something ex-
traordinary might have been made of him, Yet he was
the victim of brute passions; and I have seen him beat
his head with fury on the, ground, making. the very blood
trickle over his face, while. lie cursed and . swore most
fearfully."