The Potteries Examiner : — 1872-01-20 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

JURY.  WISE  Juries not unfrequently exciteastonishment by their extraordinary verdicts, and a cane of this kind has just occurred at the Guildford Borough Quarter Sessions. It appears that Edward Richardson, a staff-sergeant in the Royal Surrey Militia, was indicted on three separate counts for obtaining money by false pretences. On the case going to the jury they were unable to agree, and, as befalls men in such untoward circumstances, they were locked up in charge of an officer of the court. Meanwhile a second jury was empanelled, and the prisoner was tried on the third indictment, which was in all essentials similar to the first. This second jury found him not guilty. The first jury, at the end of five hours, returned into court, and their verdict was that "they found the prisoner guilty of obtaining money under false pretences, but that he had no fraudulent intention." What the prisoner had done was to obtain several sums byropresenting that the adjutant was away, and that the money was wanted for purposes of enlistment. On the foreman delivering the above verdict, the Reccrder pointed out that the first part was a verdict of guilty, and the second of not guilty. But although this seems pretty plain to most people, the foreman said they could not come to any other verdict, oven if they were locked up all night. Out of this fix the Recorder could see no other way of escape than by discharging the jury, and ordering the prisoner up for trial at the next Quarter Sessions.  In Stockwell and the neighbourhood efforts are being made to obtain signatures to a petition to the Home Secretary, praying him to reprieve the Rev. J. Selby Watson, who now lies under sentence of death for the murder of his wife. The pleas urged by the petitioners are the advanced age and the previous good character and blameless life of the accused. Mr. H. Croft, writing in the Times, believes he has found some clue, however slight, to the elucidation of the horrible enigma, "Why did the Rev. John Selby Watson kill his wife P' in a passage which he quotes from one of the unhappy criminal's books. It occurs in his "Life of Richard Person." Referring to a description by Dr. Johnson of Person's visit to Dr. Parr, at Halton, which was abruptly terminated by an insult offered to him by Mrs. Parr, the writer says :  "As Dr. Johnson does not choose to describe Mrs. Pan's insult, we may suppose that it was of a very gross character. She may, indeed, have fancied that she had reason for offering such an insult. But there are women who imagine that they May say, 'without censure, the most disagreeable things to any man, however great or good, of whom they conceive a dislike or wish to be rid. As they are safe from personal chastisement they venture to utter all the bitterness that may arise in their minds. Nothing is more disgracef alto the female sex than these cowardly attacks on men, often of great ability and merit, whom they know to be restrained by good sense and gentlemanly forbearance towards the sex from retaliation. No man can know who has not experienced how much mischief may be produced by the impertinent intrusion of a vai.fe between her husband and his friends. Mrs. Parr was a woman of violent and overbearing temper, presumptuous and inconsiderate, and having little respect or kindness for any human being."  Although the above extract does possess some interest as revealing the sentiments of the writer with regard to a certain clam of women, we can hardly say that it casts even "a spark of light' -upon the obscurity in which the origin of the tragedy is involved. No one oamo forward to accuse Mrs. Watson of having been a Mrs. Parr, and the servant girl, all the time she was in the house, never wit. messed any scenes of domestic dispeaoe. For aught -se can tell, the hapless victim may have been asleep in her chair when the demoniac impulse seized .Mr. Watson to strike her de.ad.