The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-04-24 00:00:00

iminal would be
to quer-

Pinson

entered the chapel and removed him. Mr. Pinson states,
as a turher illustration of the prisoner's state of mind,
that he hardly ever visited him without his saying " Thank
God Almighty, all is right." At one of the interviews
with his family at which he was present Rush asked whe-
ther the Queen would be in a hurry to hang him, and
upon being expostulated with for using such an expres-
sio

, added, "1 am all ready for that. You cannot sup-
pose that having prepared my defence, I am not ready in
that respect.. Thank God Almighty, lam prepared to
die." Nothing in his conduct is more remarkable than
the reliance which he placed upon his defence of himself,
his confidence in his power to convince others of his inno-
cence, and his anger at bearing that the world was unani-
mous in thinking him guilty. On leaving the chapel he
went into the prison yard and washed his face and hands
and the back of his neck with cold water at the pump.
From the prison yard he was conducted to the room of one
of the turnkeys, where Calcraft, the ex.cutioner, was
waiting to receive him. On observing him, RuQll said,
"Is that the man who is to perform this duty ?" To
which Mr. Pinson replied it was. Calcraft then desired
him to sit down, which he did, and the operation of pi-
nioning commenced. The prisoner, who appeared per-
fectly calm and collected. said with a shrn, Phi.

- - co,* yr 6 ZAJI ug, 1111. CUM
go easy; I don't want the cord to hurt me." His request
was complied with, and the rope was moved a little to give
him relief_ Rothe. maid that he was comfortable, and the
procession having been formed he was conducted to hi doom.
The man was in all respects the same unwavering, reso-
lute being, who for six days conducted his own di-fence in
a court of justice, though oppressed, not only by -the con-
viction of his enormous guilt, but also h) the knowledge
that it had been so clearly brought home to him. His
hid to his doom.

step never fait
On catching sight of the scaffold he lifted his eyes to
Heaven, raised as far as be could his pinioned hands, and
shook his head mournfully from side to side once or twice.
The pantomime was perfect, conveying almost as clearly
as words a protest of innocence, conveyed with resigna-
tion, to his fate. As he walked along he asked the go-
vernor what the words were with which the burial service
ended. He was told that it was with the benediction,
" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ," &c., and he re-
quested that the drop might fall when the chaplain came
to those words.

It will not be matter of surprise, that since the perpe-
tration of the murders at Stanfield-hall, the country-side
should have teemed with stories of the murderer's previous
life. Facts are recollected which before appeared natural
and of small account, but., seen through another medium,
are now deemed mysterious and full of suspicion; The
nurse whom he had engaged to attend his mother on her

death-bed, remembers that cne night, in the month of
August, 1848. Rush told her he would sit up with the sick
woman, and desired her to go to bed. When she had re-
tired, as he bade her, she declares Rush came into her
room, as if to ascertain if she were asleep. At the first
dawn he entered her apartment again, and told her that
his mother had been dead for some hours. She adds.
that when she rushed into the dead woman's room, she
found that Rush had laid out the corpse with his own
hands. He had summoned no witness to her last mn-

ments—he had asked no assistance in performing the.. last
offices of the dead. We do not, of course, give this story
as though there were any thing to justify the horrible in-
ference which the nurse no doubt suggests, but as showing
the feelings of the neighbourhood towards the man. But
in the following extract from the Norfolk papers there is
n.ore certainty. The death of the elder Rush (the step-
father of the murderer) was certainly a violent and a
bloody one. The fact is attested by a judicial investiga-
tion and the verdict of a coroner's jury. Rush was pre-
sent, and Rush alone. Knowing what we now know of
the man's ruthless character, a dark suspicion will arise
in the mind that he was not altogether disconnected with
the fact :

" On Thursday last (the 24th of October, 1844,) Mr.
Rush. a respectable farmer at Felmingham, and father of
Mr. Rush, a farmer and auctioneer at Wymondham, was
shot dead on the spot in his own kitchen, by the accidental
discharge of a gun. It appeared that the son had been
over the father's farm at Felmingham shooting, having
paid his father a visit for a day's sport ; and, having
returned home to his father's, had been admiring his
gun, and directing the attention of his father to it as a
very superior one. The son retired into another room
and left his father without examining the gun. Almost
directly after a report was heard, and when the son went
to see what was the matter, he found the bleeding corpse
of his father lying prostrate in the kitchen. It was found
that the gun had gone off, lodging the whole contents in
the head of his f Aber, entering at the left cheek. Instan-
taneous death was the consequence. An inquest was held
on the following day before Mr. Dench, coroner for the
Liberties of the Duchy of Lancaster, when the jury
returned a verdict of Accidental Death."
It is, however, useless now to discuss such a matter as
this. Enough was done at Stanfield-hall to place Rush
beyond the pale of human sympathies. There is no lesson
in legislation to be gathered from the fate of such a cri-
minal. This is not the case of a person tempted by
poverty or cradled by ignorance into vicious courses. It
is unfortunately true that when prices are high and wages
are low, when hands are thrown out of employment and
distress prevails, the criminal returns present an almost
proportional increase in offences against property. To
such an evil we can in some degree apply a remedy. We
pity while we condemn, and alleviate if we cannot alto-
gether cure the ill. But such considerations as these are
utterly beside the purpose in the case of the murderer
Rush. He was a man of education and of intelligence.
His means would have been affluent but for his vices.
He indulged himself in the commission of one iniquity
after another until he reached a pitch of guilt which few
men have attained before, and none, it is to be hoped, will
reach in times to come.

ORIGIN OF EMILY SANDFORD'S INTRODUCTION TO RUSH

A correspondent of the Bury Post supplies the fol-
lowing particulars relative to this unfortunate young
woman, as a caution to those who may have any young
friend seeking her livelihood as a governess—a class
greatly to be pitied. They also tend to show the extent—
the intricate ramifications of the assassin's complicated
scheme of villainy. Rush, as before stated, put an ad-
vertisement in the Times for a governess for his children.
Mrs. Sandford, the mother of ten children, seeing this,
took her eldest daughter to the reference in the advertise-
ment, a very respectable house in a good street in town,
where they found Mr. Rush occupying the first floor.
The landlady had been induced to represent she knew
Mr. Rush, and spoke of him as a worthy kind of map ;
and after various inquiries and witnessing her hand writ-
ing, the daughter was engaged to go down to Norfolk to
educate Rush's children. Some months after having been
there, she was rather surprised at receiving no letters
from her mother, and the latter was equally so at re-
ceiving no supplies from her daughter ; during this state
of things Rush when in town called upon Mrs. Sandford,
who very naturally expressed surprise at not having
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she, whereupon

James, a commercial traveller, but for smile-reasons she
thought it would be a match her mother would not alto-
gether approve, apd therefore preferred not writing at all