The Bee-Hive. — 1871-07-22 (London, England)

THE GREENWICH MURDER.  LIE acquittal of young POOK and the conviction of the woman who went by the name of DAVEY, were both anticipated by general opinion. The only circumstance in the two• cases which opposes or exceeds public expectation is, the heavy sentence given against the woman found guilty of manslaughter. Nobody believes that she meant to murder the man who died from a wound inflicted, as the jury believed, by her hand. It is, after all, a question whether she really struck a blow with the knife which she acknowledges to have snatched up in the heat of quarrel; and those who take the milder view, naturally think that a much lighter seuteuce would have met  the case of what was, then, fortuitous homicide. We shall not, upon this one instance, take up the moral question of what drink and debauchery necessarily lead to. When, however, the papers talk about the infatuated and unfortunate man as "the 8011 of a baronet," it is but fair to the baronetage to remember that the deceased was the son of a man who, though he served in the two Aces of Sheriff and Lord Mayor, and, during his year's residence in the Mansion House, was what they style "created a baronet," began life in the West of England as canvassing agent to a Number publisher in that part of the kingdom. Young Poox belonged to that section of the working class who are usually regarded as on the point of passing into the middle class. The son of a printer's compositor, he is a compositor himself. Lord Chief Justice Bovua, may be said to have directed the jury to acquit him. From the first and throughout the trial, that independent Judge reflected upon the manner in which the prosecution had been conducted—by tlw police, in terms which all but went the length of saying that the prisoner ought never to have been arraigned. In summing up, he stated that two false witnesses had been brought up, not to say suborned, against him; that, in all probability, a charge of perjury would stand against them both ; that the police had dared. to keep back clear and material facts; that the marks of blood found upon the prisoner's clothes were far toe trivial to connect hint with the murder, especially with a murder accomplished in the way described, and were besides sufficiently accounted for by him from other circumstances; that the Inspector of Yam in particular had made false statements to the prisoner; that the alleged motive in his mind for the crime imputed had been folly proved to have no ground in fact; that the police had gone altogether upon gratuitous assumptions falsified by evidence ; that the most probable time assignable for the murder completely supported the plea of alibi (elsewhere); and, in fine, that no one circumstance had been proved which. in any way brought home the crime to the prisoner's door. The jury showed their appreciation of the facts by returning a unanimous verdict of "-Not Guilty" in less than half an hour. The roughs of Greenwich have mobbed the house of the prisoner's father since the acquittal ; and, it is distinctly stated, the police made no attempt to hindcr them. This is serious, and demands the most searching inquiry from the HOME SECRETAItY and the POLICE CommissroNEn.