Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1893-11-18 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

THE MURDER OF POLICE SERGEANT EVES.  RAMSEY GE CS FOURTEEN YEARS' PENAL SERVITUDE.  James Ramsey, aged 38, an engine driver, was tried on Friday, before Lord ChlefJustice Coleridge, at the Chelmsford Assizes, for having broken into, on April 15th, a barn adjacent to the dwelling-house Of Mr. E. A. Fitch, at Hazeleigh, and stolen 13i bushels cf wheat.—Mr. Crump, Q.C., who prosecuted cn behalf of the Treasury, said Al the night of ttm tobbery a police - sergeant, named Eves, was murdered. John and Richard Davies, who lived hear the prisoner's house at PurLeigh, were asFociated with the prisoner in all that transpired, and they, together with Ramsey, were in August indicted for the murder. Ramsey was acquitted, While John Davis suffered the penalty of death, and his brother Richard was sentenced to penal servitude for life. What the jury had to di cide was whether Ramsey, who was acquitted some time since of the capital offence of murder, was guilty of the theft of the corn. No eye saw the robbery; no eye saw the murder. Prisoner had made statements to a warder, which, although adhering to his declaration that he was not guilty of the murder, shewed that he was present at the time cf the murder and know what took place —Selina Davis, widow of John Davis, deposed that on Saturday, April 15th, Ramsey came to their house, and observed to her husband that he had some bags. She went to bed shortly afterwards and fell asleep, and on wakieg she heard Ramsey say, "Put out the lamp." Ramsey must have been in the house about an hour.—Prisoner: Did not your husband ask inc to speak for him in the event of him bt ing taken for anything P—Witness: I did not hear him make such a remark.—Prisoner: Did you not say that you had heard the bloodhounds were coming to eat the villains up P—Witness : No. Richard Davis, the convict, deposed to accompanying his brother and Ramsey to the barn and filling six sacks with wheat, which they carried to a gap in Pound FMld. At the gateway leading to Little Spur-hill Ilia t.rother called him. Ho beau] a scuffle going on behind, and on retracing his footsteps he saw his brother, Ramsey, and Sergeant Eves on the ground together. He believed the sergeant was then quite dead. Ramsey said, "You are a-- nice sort of a mate, Dick," and his brother then tat him he had knocked the sergeant down and that Ramsey had cut his throat. They rolled the body into the ditch and went home.— Prisoner: You are a notorious false man. The murdered man lay in the ditch in agony for half an hour. He was going to speak the truth, for now was the time for the truth tm come out.—Witness: You did it, Ramsey.—The trisoner, continuing, said: That man (meaning the deceased) was not killed as you, Richard Davis, described. After the sergeant was knocked down, you went and got a spade with which to bury him. Sergeant Eves was alive then,and he was knocked about the head with the spade mint his head must have been almost smashed to pieces. His throat was cut in order to make sure that he was dead. The prisoner, addressing the jury,said that after he heard of the murder, he went to Jchn Davis and asked him if lie wis connected with it. At first Davis denied it, but on lie (Ramsey) promising not to say a word about the matter, Davis described in every detail what had taken place. He ( Ramsey) was not a guilty man, but if he had to suffer for what he had never done, he hoped God would bless him.— The jury, after deliberating for a few minutes, returned a verdict of guilty, and the Lord Chief Justice, in passing sentence, said he would be ill doing his duty if he shortened by one single hour the punishment he was allowed to inflict by Act of Parliament. He sentenced the prisoner to penal servitude for 14 years.