The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette. — 1880-09-21 (Dorchester, Dorset, England)

LASHING A WOULD-BE MURDERER.  ----Severe as the sentence is which Mr. Justice Stephen passed on Thursday on the man Perry, who has been for some time in custody with attempted murder in • Metropolitan Railway carriage, It can hardly be pronounoed excessive. Thirty lashes with the cat and twenty years' penal servitude form, if there were any accurate balance in which different amounts of suffering cou:d be compared, almost • heavier penalty than death. But an assault of the most deliberate and determined nature was made, and no pains were spared on the prisoner's part to complete his crime in • singularly brutal manner. It is very seldom that a case of murder or attempted murder is so absolutely clear In all its particulars as this. The victim wail, and the prisoner had been, in the ser doe of • firm of tea dealers who have shops both In the east and west of London. It Is the weekly practice of the firm to send • considerable sum of money the week's takings, apparently from Kensington to Abigate. Of this fact the prisoner, having been in their service, was aware, and In the preliminary inquiries, as well as at the trial, evidence was produced going to show that he had attempted to tremin the clerk who carried the money before he actually assaulted Lewis, the victim In the present case. On Saturday 214 of August, Perri, • young man of 24, met Lewis, • boy of 18, at the Kensington Station, and, on what may be called the plea of ' common employment," induced him to travel in the came carriage with him. Then Perry seems, in a decidedly inartistic fashion, to have tried to hocus the boy with chloroform and with port wine and laudanum, which he carried about with him. It would appear that some of the chloroform was taken, though the port wine was refused. The proceedings were interrupted by the temporary presence of another passenger, who however soon got out again. Then Perry, feeling that he was losing time, set to work at once. He hit the boy, who was apparently half stupid with what be had taken, violently on the head, took the money out of his pocket, opened the carriage door, and tried to push him out on the line. Luckily for Lewis he had strength and sense enough to resist, and Aidersgate station was soon reached. There the thief and would-be murderer got out But Lewis followed him and succeeded in getting him stopped by another passenger, after which the railway officials and policemen took him in charge. He dropped the parcel with the money in it, the bottles of drugs were found upon him, and his clothes, his stick, and the carriage in which he had been travelling showed sufficient eviden-e of his guilt in the shape of blood stains. Perry's counsel made the only iiht that could be made for his client by attempting to disprove premeditation. The defence in fact amounted to a sparody of • wellknown phrase of Dickens. "Here a clerk, here's some laudanum, let 11/1 have a murder, is the description given of Mr. Perry'e thoughts. If true it would not perhaps have much mended the matter, and the evidence already alluded to of the other clerk Emmet, who hal also been asked to " have something out of a bottle," was fatal to it. Perry's happy thoughts are too obviously periodic in their recurrence. —Daily New.