Denton Examiner, Audenshaw, Hooley Hill and Dukinfield Advertiser. — 1877-06-09 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

STOCKPORT.  DANGEROUS _PRACTICAL JOKING  _ At the St )ckport Borough Police-court, on Tue.ay, a cah-driver named John Hart, 69. Welter9treet, I leaton Norris. was brought up in custody charged with administering a noxious drug. aud attempting to poison two persons therewith.—lt appeara from the statement of Thomas Hodgkinson, one of the prosecute.. and also a cats-driver, that it has been the custom amongst a portion of the cab-drivers of Stockport to carry out practic:l jukes for several months past by putting croton oil in each others tea. Ou Saturday last he was in the act of drinking his tea when he discovered that some oroton oil had been placed in the vessel amongst the tea. Witness had administered it I himself ti his fellow drivers, aul" on one occasion had nearly killed one fellow with it." lie was eating a herring the other day, which he found had teen eprinkled with the oil referred to. The tea was handed over to Dr. Rayner. Witness laugh. ingly said they did not wish to press the case against the prisoner, as it had been simply a praotical joke. D,. It\ Mir said tan mot ni oil in toe vessel was sufficient to have almost kil.el the last witness if C. had Wien it--rho Bench, in discharging the prisoner, said it Ina, very forum:le for him that the proso.utor did not drink the tea, or it welt have killed him, and the gravity of the offence could not have been estimated: Prisoner had escaped very well indeed thin time; and he would be discharged. They Loped there could be no more such dangerous practical jokes amotiget the oab-drivern of Stockport,— Sir. Brown a,yeared for LOU pawner.  CONFESSION OF itUltl)Fdt. At the Birmingham Police Court, on W...inevay, Elizabeth Thompeon, an intelligeat-look,a; young woman, was charged on her own confese on with the murder of her two illegitimate children. From June last year the prisoner has been as Minato of the Magdalen Asylum for Fallen Women, Clarendon-road, Faligbasion, and during the past farttd,;ht has been in a very deepanding state. On the Met ult, she informed the assistant matron that she had given birth to two children in the Bir• minimax workhouse, afterwards murdering the same by throwing them into the canal. She repeated the statement to the matron, and the latter communicated with the stipendiary (Mr. T. C. S. Kynnerley); the matter was placed in the hands of the police. On Tuesday the prisoner was arrested, and admitted the truth of the self•accusation. She added that two years before entering the Magdalen Asylum she left the Birmingham workhouse with an illegitimate child, the father stating that unless she made away with it he would kill her. The same night she went to Erdington, and threw her baby into the canal, firm tying a stone to its waist. Upon threatening to summon the father of her second child to co dribate to its support, prisoner states that he replied, "Why don't you cat it in pieces, and bury it iu different places?" She replied that she would rather go to I the workhouse On the following day the fataor I offered her lss, to drown the child, and at eleven o'emak cLe aame nigut he threw too elal i into the ' ()anal at Sally Oak. Prisoner has ma-nosed the I 111611 lei of the father of her two childreu, and the ' police have ascertained that on the 4th June, 1874, she left the BLrmingham Workhouse with a chid! Nue had given birth to at the institution. She states rum her second child was regimmed in the name a Annie Jones, an 1 though thiv does not answer the desers:ition of the wurkhouae register, the elfieinia believe Bile was contiued a second Little at the ;limitation. The prisoner appeared deadly pie when before the magistrates on Tuesday, and romamed silent weilst time charge was preferred. Site was rennialed for a week, the police being instructed to make, in the meantime, the strictest enquiries into the case.