Northern Times. — 1857-08-24 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

ATTEMPTED MURDER IN MILLBANK PRISON.  One of the subwarders of this prison narrowly escaped assassination on Friday, at the hands of a penal class convict named Jas. Gorman, who has already, in other prisons, made two attempts to murder officers under whose charge he has been placed. The convicts at Millbank attend Divine service in classes at the prison chapel every morning. Only a limited number of penal class prisoners are permitted to be present at one time, owing to the known desperate character of these criminals. On Friday four men of this class—out of a total of some 20 prisoners —were conducted to the chapel in charge of Warder Wilkie and Assistant Warder ifivington. On leaving the chapel, and while passing down an angle of the pentagon staircase, one of their number, James Gorman, made a desperate attack on Bevington with an open metal weapon, felling him to the ground, and inflicting injuries which, in all probability, if they do not prove fatal, will seriously injure the unfortunate man for life. Gorman was third in the rank, and just as he was turning the angle of the staircase leading from the chapel he rushed forward and dealt a desperate blow at the upper part of Bevington'a person. The miscreant had a sharp weapon in his hand, which entered the warder's face over the cheek bone, and; traversing the fl,shy part of the face, came out through the mouth under the upper lip. The convict was seized by Wilkie and other officers, while the weapon was still in his hand, and having been secured, was presently placed in a strong cell. The resident surgeon of the prison, Mr. Savory, was immediately summoned to the wounded man, and the most app-oved means adopted to stanch the bleeding. The poor fellow suffered agonising pain from the severity of his wound, and is still lying in a precarious state. There stems to have been an absence of all reasonable motive for the attack, inasmuch as Bevington had only taken charge of the penal class since Tuesday last. It is generally supposed the attack was intended far his co-warder, *Wilkie, who, although an excellent, officer, has obtained the ill- will of the convicts by a determination to carry out the discipline of the prison. The weapon _used by the assassin was a piece of iron hoop, worked into something like the • blade of a knife, and strongly bound by waxen thread into a woo len handle. The circumstance was immediately reported to the Home Secretary, and in the course of the morning Captain O'Brien, one of the Inspectors of Prisons, attended at Millbank and insti• tuted an investigation into the affair. Capt. O'Brien's report will be forwarded to Sir George Grey, who, under the provisions of the new Act of Parliament, has the pa wer to commit the convict to Newgate without the intervention of any magisterial inquiry. The penal class convicts are the worst description of prisoners, and are received at IWllbank as incorrigibles from all parts of this country. Gorman is one of the worst of this degraded body. He was originally convicted in a midland county, and sentenced to some light punishment, while undergoing which he attempted to stab an officer of the prison, and on trial for this offence was sentenced to 14 years' transportation. In due course he came to the Model Prison at Pentonville, where he again attacked and brutally assaulted one of the officers. For this offence he was transferred to the penal class of prisoners, and sent to Millbank about four months ago. His conduct has been desperately bad since his admission, and it is undersCood that his latest crime has not excited much surprise among the authorities of the prison, the wretched man having only a few days since assured the rev. chaplin that "he would do for some of them before long."