The Sun. — 1860-10-06 (London, England)

NATIONAL ANTHEM  •~  THE SUN.  LONDON, SATURDAY, OCT. 6, 1880.  Another phase of the Road Murder mystery has passed away, and we know but little more than previously. Yet it cannot be denied that the endeavour to fix a charge, in some form, on ELIZABETH GOUGH, has fixed, somewhat more definitely, our attention on several small facts and circumstances, and enabled Its better to estimate their value. The public, perhaps, will be curious to know what was the real design of this prosecution. Mr. SLACK, and all to whom he communicated the result of his examinations, must have been fully aware that no jury would convict the young woman from the evidence adduced; for of her being the actual murderer there was not a shadow of proof ; and of the only other possible charges, those of being an accomplice before or after the fact, beyond the circumstance of her being in the room whence the child was taken, the grounds of suspicion were of the most doubtful character. The result of the whole inquiry before the Magistrates -was more unfavourable to some of the witnesses than to the young woman, and it is difficult not to believe that the real object of the proceedings was to place GoUGH in a position in which she might be induced by confessing all she knew to save her own life. That the girl does know who the murderer is, it is difficult to doubt. The child was a very heavy one. No person could well have held him, and have adjusted at the same time the bedclothes of his cot with such exactness as had been used. A man, according to the surgeon's description of the violence used, seems, probably, to every one, to have been the inflicter of the wounds. But no man would have laid. the bedclothing in the order in which it was found. Either therefore a woman and a man entered her room and bore off the child,' arranging first the clothing, as GOUGH says she found it, or its arrangements must have been her work, in which case, she„ of course, was privy to the whole transaction. If Mr. SLACK had little doubt of the latter being the truth, his strong suspicion is, perhaps, shared, justly or not, by the majority of those who read the evidence.  The probable manner of the child's death, from the later xeflections of the surgeon on what he had seen, appears somewhat clearer. The darkness about th e month was so considerable as to make him almost certain that if death had not been actually caused by suffocation, the 'pressure applied to the mouth had caused pulsation to cease, before the dreadful cut on the throat was inflicted; at least the appearance of the mouth, coupled with the fact that the blood had not spurted about, rendered it almost certain that the heart had ceased to act. The stab was undoubtedly inflicted after death. The bloody part of the w ork was certainly perpetrated out of the house. But, why resorted to if the child were suffocated ? Was it to make sure that by no acci dent it should recover breath, and even from the waterclo set make its cries possibly heard ? But one or two -unknown mortals can answer this sad question.  The chief points against the nursemaid, relied on by the prosecution, were, First, the necessity of two persons to leave things as they were found, the improbability of two persons entering her room for the purpose, and the strong presumption hence arising, of her guilty knowledge. Second, the discrepancy between her own statements as to the time when she knew that the blanket was removed from the bed. Thirdly, the piece of chest-flannel fitting her and apparently belonging to her, which was also found inside the water-closet. Fourthly, The discrepancy between her statement and Mrs.