The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1842-01-25 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

FASTING.—In the first report of the inspectors of prisons is to be found a singular instance of long abstinence from food, terminated, however, at last by death, as Cavannah's would have been had he carried out his system of fasting to the last extreme. Under the head of " Ipswich Borough Gaol" the following anecdote is recorded :—" There has been one death in the present year under such extraordinary circumstances, that I venture to cite the case, although not immediately in connexion with the subject of the report. Wiliam Casey, a native of Ireland, was tried March 9, 1835, for the murder of his child, and was acquitted on the ground of insanity. He then manifested a determination to destroy himself, and every care, was taken to prevent him. He then resolved to effect it by starvation, and refused all food. The first ten days he was without a drop of water. On the eleventh day he drank a quart. Then he went for several days without food, and drank a quantity of water again. Food in every enticing variety was placed and left before him, and carpets were laid in the approaches to his cell, in order that he might be watched. He was frequently seen to crawl out of bed and smell the food, and then return. His wife once attempted to put a strawberry into his mouth, and he would have strangled her had he not been prevented. He lived on in this way, taking nothing but water, except on one occasion, during the last five days of his life, when he took a little rum. He died on the Ist of August. During the whole period of his confinement he always stood, and was never known to sit down when not in bed. His violence was so great as to preclude the possibility of the surgeon's administering nutriment to him otherwise than by the natural channel."  CHILD Mutti3Eit.—We deeply regret being under the necessity of giving the details of another brutal act, by which a human being has been deprived of life on its very threshold. The accused is a single woman, of loose character, named Elizabeth Poole, residing with her uncle at Lee Bridge, between this town and Market Drayton, and who had formerly given birth to two illegitimate children. On Sunday night last, her uncle turned her out of doors, and she proceeded to the residence of an aunt at some distance, named Maddox, from whom she entreated a night's lodging, which was reluctantly granted. In the morning the husband of Maddox got up, and made a fire previous to going out to his work ; and Elizabeth Poole was then observed to get out and into bed twice or thrice, which induced her aunt to ask if she was unwell, to which she replied that she felt sick and very poorly. Maddox having left, the prisoner went down into kitchen, and presently Mrs. Maddox and a niece sleeping in the same room thought they heard an infant cry, and on the niece hastening down stairs she saw an infant, and told her aunt. The aunt then came down stairs, and both followed the prisoner to an outhouse, where they found her, and on looking under the seat, they saw the body of an infant amongst the filth. Terrified at the sight, they went off for found that the poor infant, in its assistance, and nearly an hour elapsed before they procured it. On returning they death struggle, had slightly altered its position, and stretched out its arms, but was quite dead. The unhappy mother was taken into custody, and an inquest held on the body of the child; but the committal of the prisoner is postponed till she is in a condition to be removed.—Shropshire Conservative.