The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1851-03-11 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

SINGULAR TRIAL.—A singular trial took place at the Assizes at Swansea, on Saturday last. Captain Charles Henry Ackerley, a retired officer in the navy, a man of good connexions, and well known in London for his eccentricities. was arraigned for the murder of Matthew Tingle, a collier. It appeared that the deceased had been burned by an explosion in a coal pit, and was under the care of the surgeon of the works, when, on the 12th of December, Captain Ackerley called at his house in Aberdare Valley, and representing that he was instructed to treat the sufferer mei ically, his directions were obeyed by the man's attendants. Captain Ackerley having directed the plasters with which Tingle's wounds had been covered to be removed, he placed a cloth over the sick man's face, put a lighted lamp under the cloth near the man's nose, telling him to breathe as fast as he could through his nostrils, and ordered the poor fellow's legs and arms to be violently moved about by the attendants. He next gave Tingle a pill, and pushed a feather down his throat; and when this strange treatment produced sickness, Ackerley observed, "That, is the gas I am pumping front the man's stomach." The man got worse from that. time, and died the next day. Mr. Davies, the surgeon who had attended .deceased, considered that the prisoner's treatment accelerated his death. Captain Ackerley, who  conducted his own defence, cross-examined the witnesses at great length, and in an extraordinary manner. When called upon to address the jury, he produced a tin lamp, with an open top, containing a lighted taper, with the side cut away so as to admit a man's lower jaw, and proceeded to descant. at great length upon its virtues as a medical agent. His address. which occupied nearly an hour, was of the most rambling and incoherent description ; and his notion—or rather delusion—seemed to be that his treatment had relieved the sick man from an " atmospheric tonnage" by which he was oppressed. Mr. Justice Williams summed up with great care, and the iurv. after ten minutes consultation, deeming the prisoner  insane, returned a verdict of not guilty. RIOT IN Sussr.x.—A disturbance, which is likely to lead to a legal investigation took place in the town of Ristgrinstead on Friday evening. The widow of Mr. 11,.1.;,-, ye.Hertable farmer, in the parish of  Eastgrinstead, laving fallen into misfortunes, was admitted as an inmate of Sackville College. At her death, her daughter (Mrs. Jenner, a highly-respectable person, who, now keeps the charity school of Mrs. Eloper, .• at.,. of hor mother  IJI buried according to the usual custom of the English Church. To this the Rev. Mr. Neale, the warden of the college, objected, and insisted upon the right of furnishneculiarlv.shaned mediseval coffni, a cutain bier, and  a pall bearing the sign of the cross. The relations of the deceased expostulated with_ the reverend gentleman, and  the college was declared in a  I ingress or egress  are informed, were not even admitted to see the remains of the deceased. As the funeral procession► moved from the door, a grandson of Mrs. Aikido snatched the obnoxious pall from the coffin, and the corpse was carof indignant bystanders. to the was unscrewed, to .satisfy the  the deceased that the body was in