The Evening post. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1888-1889, 1888-12-31
A TERRIBLE MISTAKE,

Two Men Imprisoned for Nine Years
for u Crime Not Committed by Them.
a somewhat matter-of-fact question
asked in the House of Commons on
Wednesday, says the London NeCs, re-
coived quite matters fact reply. Mr..
Milvain asked the Home Secretary
whether inquiry had been made into the
confession of man who alleged that he
and another committed burglary Mt Ed
lingham vicarage, Northumberland, in
1879, for which two other men were con-
victed and had been ever since suffering
a sentence of penal servitude.
The home secretary told Mr.. Milvain
in quiet unimpassioned official way
that such inquiry had been made, and
that, as the result of it, the two men who
had been nine years in penal servitude
had been let out ION license" and the
two other men named in the confession
were to be brought before the Criminal
Court. No more was said. The house
Immediately became interested in the
question of the governorship of Queens
land, and there was nothing in its de-
meanor to show that it had given one of
the most terrible tragedies of modern
criminal annals more than passing
thought For, without wishing to pref
udice u case which is still under investi-
cation, it may be said without confidence
that, whoever may be guilty, the two
men who have been for nine years in the
penal cell are absolutely innocent of the
crime laid to their charge.
Justice has simply made mistake in
Of a "a
are so dreadful in their consequences that
one feels only less pity for those who
make them than for those at whose eX-
pense they are made. The two poor fell
lows who have just come out to
and on the green world are named
nagan. They were convicted at the
Northumberland winter assizes of 1879
of burglary and attempted murder
in a lonely vicarage, in which, curl
ously enough, the judge, Sir ii. Man
isty, before whom they were tried, first
saw the light 1t was an ideal burglary
of the tragic sort, lacking hardly single
element of terror, and not without its
element of pity, In the dead of the
night on Friday, the 9TH of February,
1879, the Rev. Mr.. Buckle of Edlingham
vicarage was awakened by his daughter,
who had been alarmed by a noise down
stairs. Men were in the house-that
was certain-and only the locked door of
a drawing-room stood between them
and the all but helpless
inmates whom they were determined TO
reach. Miss Buckle had challenged them
from the staircase. and instead of run
ming away they had quietly resumed
their attempt to force the door, There
was touching scene between father and
daughter as the vicar. arming himself
with an old sword, went down to en-
counter the burglars. He implored his
daughter to go to her room, but she in
sisted on sharing his peril. When they
reached the ground floor they saw
two men in the dim light, one of them
holding what appeared to be gun. The
candle which the vicar carried was soon
extinguishcd, but the brave old man
made for the intruders with his ancient
weapon and lunged at them in the dark,
passing the sword, as he thought, sew
eral times into human flesh. Then there
was flash and a report, and he felt that
he had been hit by quantity of small
shot, as from poacher's gun. He did
not know at the time that his heroic
daughter had been hit as well and far
more dangerously than himself, for the
simple reason that she said no word of
it until the neighborhood had been
alarmed and surgeon had been called
in to attend to her fathers hurt. In the
confusion the two burglars made their
escape.
The police were soon able to effect
important arrests" Edlington is neal
Alnwick, and in Alnwick lived Murphy
and Brannagan, with not the best charac-
tiers in the world. They were poor, and
they were partial to ''rabbiting," sport
which is apt to take persons of their class
abroad at an hour when honest men
should be in their beds.