The Sun. — 1827-12-11 (London, England)

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.  GUILDHALL.—MichaeI Collins, a native of the Land of Song and Saints, was charged with a sanguinary assault upon the person of his 'aged mother. Dennis O'Keefe, a watchman, of St. Andrew's, Holborn, late on Saturday night, was called into the house by a little boy, who told him there was a man murdering his own mother. " I went into it with all speed," continued Dennis O'Keefe, " and when I came to the bottom of the stair, I looked up and saw what appeared to be the dead body of a woman, lying on the first landing, without sense or motion—for neither hand nor limb did it move at all. The people in the house wanted me to go up and seize the man that done it—and they said he was gone into his own, room ; but I didn't like to trust myself alone with such a murthering scoundrel, so I sent off to the watch-house for assistance. While waiting for it, I saw the prisoner come out of a side room on the landing, take up the woman that was lying there, and throw her vengeously down the stairs, and she fell at my feet, covered with blood. She came down from the very top to the bottom, her head and her back bumping against the stairs cruelly—so that she got enough to kill her then, if she didn't get anything before that ; and the landing, and the stairs, and the place at the bottom of the stairs, was all paddled in blood." A surgeon's certificate was here handed in, stating that the poor woman was in a very dangerous condition. The prisoner, a dark, ill-looking fellow, treated the matter with levity ; and when asked by the Alderman whether he wished to say any thing, he carelessly replied, " they haven't told you that my mother was dead drunk, and that she gave me the first blow." "If your mother was the most wicked wretch upon the face of the earth," rejoined Mr. Alderman WAITUMAN, "it would not justify you even in lifting your hand againt her." The ruffian was then committed to the Compter to wait tlit issue of his sanguinary violence. After the whole of the charges on the list had been disposed of, a respectably-dressed man approached the table, and said he wished to obtain the Alderman's advice in a very distressing affair. His wife having robbed him of 1,2501., and absconded with a rascally slaughterer of horses ! . _  The applicant had been married to his faithless wife only three years at the time of her elopement, which took place seven weeks ago ; and the circumstance had so affected him diet he had been confined to his room, and almost constantly to his bed, ever since. Her paramour, the horse slaughterer, who had previously signalised himself by debauching another married woman, and afterwards abandoning her, was in the habit of frequenting a tavern in which the applicant sometimes spent an evening ; but how this horseslaughtering Giovanni became acquainted with the applicant's wife did not appear. Some few weeks previous to her elopement he, the applicant, had 1,250/. by him in his house, in contemplation of a purchase he had at that time in view ; but, as that purchase had gone off, and he was going out a shooting with a friend, he directed his wife to vest the 1,2501. in stock, as it was a pity so much money should continue idle. When he returned from his shooting excursion, his wife told him she had done as he directed her ; and at the same time she handed him the papers relative to the investment ; which papers, without taking the trouble to examine, he desired her to place, with some others, in a private drawer; and she did so. But after she and her horse-slaughtering gallant had eloped, he discovered that she had invested the stock in her own maiden name ; and, by making affidavit before the Lord Mayor that she had lost the receipt, she subsequently succeeded in getting the whole 1,2501. into her pocket again. Mr. Alderman WAITHMAN was of opinion that a Magistrate could not interfere; but he supposed the horseslaughterer might be punished by a suit in Doctors' Commons.. _ _  With this advice the poor deserted Benedict withdrew.