npedrazzini/19thc_murder_suicide_news huggingface dataset:
The Express. — 1853-07-02 (London, England)

SINGAPORE.  PIRACY AND MURDER OF AN ENGLISH  CAPTAIN AND CREW. Letters received from Singapore to the 15th May, afford shocking details of another of thosa serial murders on board ship, arising out of the odious coolie trade. In the present instance the vessel cut off was a foreign vessel, sailing under the Peruvian flag, but officered by Englishmen who have fallen victims to the foul trade in human flesh which has for some few years past been carried on from China to South America and the Hay annas. It would appear from the facts disclosed during an official investigation into the matter here, that the Peruvian barque Rosa Elias, of 300 tons, received on board at Cum-sin 1-moon (between Hong-Kong and Canton), 201 Chinese coolies, of which number one was a doctor bound for Callao. The reason no doubt for shipping coolies at Cum-sing-moon is because, there being no consular authority there, the vilest practices may with impunity be resorted to in order to secure a shipment of coolies. At Amoy, where there is a British consul, and the emigrants were shipped in British vessels, the most outrageous practices were resorted to in order to induce men to embark, but in the case of the Rosa Elias there was not the least surveillance. According to the general testimony of the men examined (who are not alleged to have had any share in the murders committed on board), the major part of them were kidnapped and oreiNy c arried on board, or enticed by the Chinese coolie brokers on various pretexts to see the vessel, from which they were not again suffered to depart. Many of the parties thus shamefully decoyed consisted of boys under 12 years of age, the Ron Elias having 45 of this latter class on board. It would also appear, from the coolies' statements that they were informed by their merciless shippers that the vessel was destined for a country abounding in gold, and that they would be employed in disembowelling the precious metal, whilst, in fact, the shippers contemplated employing them as guano diggers. Under such circumstances we need not be surprised that after a few days at sea men so shipped became dissatisfied with their lot, and anxious to return to their own country. Well, with this living cargo, without an interpreter, the barque Rosa Elias quitted the Canton river early in March, under the command of an Englishman named George Wcstby, and P. W. Dempster as mate. The vessel was fitted up with a slave deck—that is, the space between decks, originally about 61 feet, was divided into two tiers, each about three feet in height, into which the coolies were packed. For some time after quitting Cum-sing-moon all went on well, but ere a month had elapsed the supply of water to the coolies was curtailed nearly one-half, upon which they expressed much dissatisfaction, and eommenced a row on board, which was suppressed on the crew being furnished with firearms. The latter were not used on this occasion, but the strong and resisting feeling
The Express. — 1853-08-11 (London, England)

MAJL-11CS steamers are ordered to take on board all Honourable Members who may choose to present themselves at Portsmouth Ifor that purpose soon after daybreak this morning. i The vessels are ordered punctually at six—with sea-1 sickness to follow. Great will be the hilarity of Portsmouth and the joy of Portsea. If they cannot have re al war, then three cheers fora sham one. Flags willbe ' flying, and great will be the businessof the brewers and publicans of Hants. A few thousand, at the most, may see those grand sea Itviatlians, our Wooden Walls, go through some distant and half smoke-hidden mermenvres—floating giants at play—and then the remaining millions of tax-payers will pay the piper; and the whole affair, like the echoes of our sea thunder off the Nab, will die away—in smoke.  WE are often told that ours is an age in which we must never calculate upon events diverging from the usual tram-roads—that there is nothing for ns  but to look upon social life as a very mechanical, prosaic affair, and make the beet of it. If wo want romance, we are told to look for it at the circulating' library. Society is " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd " within such narrow limits, is pinioned down by such a multitude of petty trammels, that we must never expect any development within it that may not be explained by the commonest laws. There are very few diligent observers of the course of public events who will not be able to show the utter fallacy of this  statement of the composition of modern society. Such persons know well enough that in any crowd they enter they may be jostled by some individual worthy to figure as the hero of a three-volume novel or a five-act drama. They will not turn pale f you tell them that they have just shaken hands with a murderer. They acknowledge as the vulgarest of truisms that "there is a skeleton in every house." They are fully convinced that as they walk through society they are for ever on the verge of awful mysteries that the merest accident may bring to light. They are certain of only one thing, that nothing in the constituted state of social life around them is certain. Such person■ as these will look upon the trial at Gloucester (reported in our columns this day), in  which a soi-dibant Sir RICHARD SMYTH strove to eject an undoubtedly bona fide SMITH (a minor) from the possession of estates valued at from 20,0001. to 25,0001. a year as a phenomenon that may be expected occasionally to manifest itself in the working of society. The " used up" portion of the world would never expect to meet with details of this nature ' out of a three-volume novel. Certainly, they are such as would do credit to the imagination of a crack novelist. SMITH versus SMITH is clearly an illustration of the romance of real life. The present possessor of the ancestral acres of the SMITHS derives his title from his grandmother, the  sister of a certain Sir 111:GII SMYTH, who died in 1824. Sir HUGH was known to be twice married, and to have had no issue in either case. On the death of Sir limit, is 1824, his brother, Sir JOIIN, succeeded to his estates, who, dying in 1849, was succeeded by his sister
The Express. — 1866-11-10 (London, England)

PUBLIC OPINION IN CANADA.  The Montreal Witness sees " nothing extraordinary in the event" unless the sentence is carried out. On that point it has the following :  We do not see from the evidence that there was any proof of the prisoner being the actual murderer of any of our heroic volunteers who fell on that occasion, but only that he was one of the invaders. To this crime our laws attach the same penalty as to the crime of high treason- the penalty of death. Now, it must be admitted that executions for treason, which used in old times to be frightfully frequent, have been growing fewer and fewer, till now they are rarely heard of. There was not, we think, a single one of the cabbage garden rebels in Ireland executed ; and the first execution for treason has yet to take place in the United States out of more than half a million who might lawfully be executed for that crime during the late rebellion, and many of them most aggravated cases. The only execution of the kind in the States was that of John Brown for his invasion of Virginia : and we all know the impression produced by that event, and the reputation earned by Governor Wiae for his part in it. Far be it from us to defend the Fenian, or to extenuate their crime ; but we cannot ghat our eyes to the fact that it was a political crime, and that the whole current of public opinion in all countries, unless it be Russia or Jamaica, tends towards leniency in such cases after the immediate danger is past. That is to say, any amount of severity may be used in the field against those who have arms in their hands ; but after the emeutc or invasion is successfully quelled, there is little or no more blood shed, however severe the punishment may be otherwise. It will be well, at all events, for his Excellency the Governor to consult the Home Government in this matter, as it will have a direct interest in anything that affects our external relations.  The Toronto Leader, a bitter opponent of the North during the late war, sees in the employment of counsel for the prisoners by the United States government a criminal sympathy with the acts for which they are being tried. It is bitter in its denunciations of the United States government and people, and rather clamours for the blood of the convicted. The Ottawa Times, on the other hand, takes almost the opposite view, and looks upon the employment of counsel by the American government as a perfectly legitimate course of action, " a compliment to the justice of our laws, and the integrity of their administration, of which we should feel justly proud !" Rumours are rife in Toronto that an attempt at rescue will be made, and the press of that city report that there are a large number of strangers there at present without any visible means of support, and that a large number out of employment in other provincial cities have &eked thither, all
The Express. — 1866-07-10 (London, England)

BRIGHT, M.l'., said that Mr. Buxton was quite at liberty to differ from the committee, and if the difference I was on a matter of vital importance, to withdraw from the committee ; but he had not done that. The committee did not even divide ; and he (Mr. Bright) went away from the meeting under the impression that Mr. Buxton, seeing the great majority of the committee on one side, might probably feel himself able to go with them. Two days after they saw this very letter—this very speech made at the meeting—in the newspapers, although there were no means taken to report the bservations of members on the other aide of the question. The proper course for Mr. Buxton to have taken was to let a paragraph appear stating that Mr. Buxton had withdrawn from the Jamaica Committee, not being able to proceed further in the course the committee had marked out for itself. But the letter of Mr. Buxton appeared to him (Mr. Bright) as a most hastily penned fulmination against the committee with which he had been actin, and of which he was chairman. (Hear, hear.) When he (Mr. Bright) moved Cie resolution, with regard to the prosecution of Mr. Eyre, he put them in words having special reference to the point whether Mrs. Gordon would undertake the prosecution or not, as he had not come to the conclusion that it was desirable for the committee to prosecute if Mrs. Gordon would have nothing to do with the prosecution. Ai to prosecuting Mr. Eyre for a misdemeanour, Mr. Buxton spoke of the crime as if it was not murder. lle (Mr. Bright) recollected at the meeting of parliament he discussed this question with one of the oldest and 'Lest esteemed judges in En Lod, who said—not in his (Mr. Bright's) presence alone, but before several persona—that in his whole life he had never seer. or known a case more distinctly of murder than the putting of Mr. Gordon todeath. His opinion, distinctly and clearly was that if Mrs. Gordon was willing in her own name to commence proceedings with a prosecution of. Mr. Eyre, the committee should undertake to collect funds and give her such legal assistance as was in their power. ( Hear, hear.) But if Mrs. Gordon was prevented by anybody from prosecuting, and was altogether against such a thing as a prosecution, it would make the position of the committee more difficult, and the whole question would have to he re-considered. . Mr. Luntow moved " That this committee approves end confirms the resolutions passed by the executive committee on the :6th of June."  Professor GOLDWIN SMITH seconded the resolution in able speech. Sir T. F. Iluxrox defended the course pursued by Mr. C. Buxton.  Several members of the committee having spoken, The resolution was carried, there being but one die• sentient.  On the motion of Mr. BEALFA, Mr. John Stuart Mill, M.P., was unanimously elected chairman of the com mittee.  Mr.
The Express. — 1866-05-30 (London, England)

TURKEY.  RAGL'SA, MAT 29.  A frigate, a war sloop, and a despatch boat belonging to the Turkish navy have arrived at Antivari to guard the coast of Albania against any sudden landing of the Italian volunteers.  The Jounusl de Bruxelles says :—" The departure of the King and Queen of the Belgians for Paris will probably take place on the Ath or 9th of June, when the period of full mourning at the court will have expired. Their Majesties will, it is said., remain several days in the French capital."  Serious disorders have just broken out at Marienburg, in Prussia. The men of the reserve burst into private houses, and demanded with menaces, money, provisions, and clothes. Shops were plundered, and threats of a general pillage openly made. The officers were present at those scenes of brigandage without being able to control the men, and troops had to be sent for from Dsntzic and Elberg. " Never," says the Kanifekerg Gaze de, which gives the above details, " would it have been believed that such a scene could occur in open day in a civilised town..•  The Journal de Toulouse states that Aspe, con_ deruned to hard labour for life for the murder of his female servant, has not only not appealed, but has confessed his crime. He adds that he buried the head which has been so vainly sought for near the edge of the canal, not far from the spot where the body of Marie Guillonet was found.  After some further words on low corsages, the Post to-day proceeds to remonstrate with its lady readers upon another offence, the practice of hair bleaching, which is now so prevalent. Nature, it says, ever harmonious in colour, gives hair and complexions to match ; and in this way brunette and blonde, though different, may each attain to an equal rank of beauty. " Most gentlemen could now point, were it polite, to ladies of their acquaintance, who, during the past few months, have been subjecting their hair to an injurious process of etiolation. Of the present effect one need not speak ; if it be the pleasure of dark ladies to wear light tresses, well and good ; but what we would then add is—get the effect through some other agency than bleaching. The practice is simply ruinous ; one that if followed again and again will change once silken tresses of brown or black into something, for colour, like a singed cat's back ; for texture not unlike a convict's task of picked and unravelled oakum. At any rate, brunettes should be consistent. Having bleached their tresses, they should go into a chlorine bath and bleach their skins to match."  Late on Sunday evening last a large portion of the Gleamy and Glendatoughen mountain, over Clonmel, the property of Mr. Joseph Napier Higgins, was set on fire. The flames were found by the constabulary of the Old Bridge and Tourneena stations to be rapidly extending, fanned by a strong south-easterly wind, from several directions, some two miles apart, leaving little doubt that the fire was kindled by an incendiary.
The Express. — 1865-08-01 (London, England)

WINSOI. Haunts, having been QUEEN'S evidence, has not been tried.  - . Incredible as such • tale would seem, there is no ground for not believing it. It is too circumstantial not to have failed in cross eximitiation if it had been false ; it inculpates the relater too horribly to have been an invention for the purpose of saving her own life. It is incredible because we are unwilling to believe that such things are compatible with human nature. But the answer is that the nature which could conceive them could do them. A callousness to every human sentiment appears in the narrative as much as in the deeds.  callowness a this whitkis post hi" The And cit of su ooessea his infant murder, the invitatio, 41,}4, m entrust another victim to t epeptor, gaining time after timsjor Aliiiieke of the visits to the cottage where the innocent child was being meantime fed, the presence of the mother when her offspring was deliberately taken from her feet to be slaughtered, her aid in concealing and disposing of the corpse, are features in the tale of such unimaginable barbarity that they cannot but be true. Well, what can we dot what can society do ! It can hang, as doubtless it most justly will, this wholesale murderess ; it can banish from its thoughts and presence the mother who worse than Lady MACBSTH, gave money to another, and bade her to take, the babe and murder it, " while smiling in her face." And this is all that society or the law can do. But thoegh the nation is powerless, surely men and women can do something more. Surely three unhappy girls whose madness and misery make the trade of Mrs. %mines ; surely those erring wives whose flaws must, at any price, be kept from their husband's knowledge ; surely even the murderesses of their own or another's offspring, must be within reach of some hnman influence. Can we think of a " Sunday out " spent in such a business, without thinking that there must be means by which Christian charity could reach the hearts in which such ill fancies are loft to breed I It is clear that this terrible and growing sin—too doubtful generally for law to act as much of • deterrent power—must be reached, if at all, by individual ministrations. And this must work, not after, but before such deeds are done, by care to keep poor women from the way of falling ; by care to teach them that even so great • sin is yet not absolutely unpardonable, and need not be put away from sight by one so much greater as murder ; and by the fostering, in all chases, of that sense of the sacredness of life, which shall prevent the motives of poverty, or of inconvenience, even where that of shame is absent, from suggesting that it were good if the poor infant that has brought trouble with it were huddled anyhow out of the world.
The Express. — 1864-10-21 (London, England)

LAIII-17 ENTALLIGENCA  -;" • BRIGANDAGB AT ROHR  The effects of frontier brigandage have just come home to the French. On Monday, the 10th inst., two French gendarmes—a brigadier and a private—stationed at Ceprano, whilst crowing the valley of the Sacco, between Pofi and Castro, fell in with and arrested a Bourbon brigand. At a certain spot where be knew that his comrades were in ambush, the brigand gave a significant whistle, the whole band rushed out from the forest, and, attacking the gendarme:: furiously, soon killed them. Not content with this, they proceeded to mutilate the oorpeea, crushing their heads by repeated blows with stones and other indignities impossible to relate. The plundering part of their profession was not forgotten by the brigands, as they carried off the gendarmes' watches, boots, money, and stripes of silver lace. On the 13th the funeral obsequies of the defunct gendarmes were performed at Ceprano, whither a French military commission has been sent to verify as far as possible the circumstances of the tragic occurrence. It is evident that the activity of the Italian troops on the other side of the Liris has driven numerous bands of reactionary brigands to the pontifical territory again, for the whole province of Froeinone is in such a state of alarm from the continual robbing, ransoming, and murdering of these scoundrels, that the very farmers are beginning to neglect their out-of-doors (occupations for fear of falling victims to their cruelty. Whilst the French gendarmes were being I murdered on the banks of the Sacco, the papal gendarmes were sustaining an arduous combat with another band of brigands at Campo Baffone, near Subiaco. The brigands had captured two Roman landowners at Rocca di Botts, and demanded a heavy ransom for them. They had carried off numerous flocks of sheep, and created a perfect panic in the country. A detachment of 26 papal gendarmes followed the movements of the brigands, and assailed them on the morning of the 11th at Campo Baffone. The result of the conflict was the salvage of one of the captured individuals and 240 sheep by the gendarmes, who, however, lost two men killed. The brigands had three men wounded, but carried off their other prisoner and the rest of the sheep. Much irritation prevails among the French on account of this barbarous outrage on the two gendarmes, and some sharp notes have already passed on the subject between the French and Papal authorities.  The prisoners arrested for making the demonstration in favour of the convention and the Emperor of the French, three weeks ago, are still in confinement at the French police barracks. They are about 20 in number, and, with a view to restoring them to their families, an address in their behalf from the Romans has been forwarded to the French Ambassador. This document has been published in the Nazion, but there is no proof of its having as yet obtained the desired result of effecting the liberation of the prisoners.
The Express. — 1864-08-29 (London, England)

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.  CONCLUSION OF THE TRIAL FOR MURDER.—VERDIOT AND SENTENCE. (nom ova owa couseromorr.) PARIS, SUNDAT Evaora.  In the Labastide affair we have now the different pleadings and the condemnation. On the 23rd and 24th of the mouth the Procureur-Giniral occupied himself with Jacques Latour, leaving the other prisoner to be dealt with by the Procureur-ImperiaL K L6o Dupr6, in a speech highly spoken of by the French press, pressed the conviction of the culprit against whom he appeared as if it were more necessary some one should be punished for the crime at the Château Ballard than that the entire truth should be brought to light. Either the court at Poi: is dealing with a farce most skilfully played, or else the two men charged with the four murders never knew each other. On the last day of the examination of witnesses Audony was again appealed to to acknowledge his guilt and give the names of his accomplices. Angry recrimin►tions passed between him and Latour, and even then Latour joined his voice to that of the judge and called on Audouy to speak the troth boldly. All that poor Hercules could answer was that he only wished he had been present when the crime was committed, as then he would have been able to point out the assassins. No proof has been brought forward that Latour and Andouy ever met, and the latter more than once repeated that he would have been sorry to have mixed in society with such a man as Monsieur Latour, as he persisted in calling him. Now all who have followed the trial, and are acquainted with the incidents of the murder, are convinced that three or four men were engaged in it. If the two prisoners be really guilty, one or two more are wanting to make up the number ; and if only one was present, then the mystery is greater still. The Procureur-General upheld the act of accusation, arguing that everything which had been put forward by the crown had been proved satisfactorily in court, and that the criminal life of Jacques Latour only needed murder to render its villany complete. BL Ldo Duptsi thus terminated Lis remarks, which are said to have been listened to with grim admiration by Latour, just as one clever reasoner listens to another: " I have finished," cried the Procureur, "my sketch of this monster. When I have him before my eyes accompanied by his cortege of crimes he oppresses me. It is time that be should disappear in the gulf. . . . You have nothing to do with what the law may command. We hope that your firmness will rise to the level of your duties. I invite you to be firm. Yesterday you were the servants of the law, to-day you are its dispensers. This law obliges you to defend society in exchange foe the oath which you have taken. The strong character of the inhabitants of your country is well known," &c.; and when the Procureur sat