The Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1865-12-23 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

THREATENING LETTER.  At Stafford Assizes Jobßostock was indicts d for maliciously sending a letter to Edwin Heaton, threatening to kill and murder him, on the 14th of November, at ChEckley : Mr. Heaton was a land agent of a Mr. Phillips, a considerable owner of property in this county, and as such agent had given notice to a tenant of Mr. Phillips, named Blower, to leave his farm on last Lady-day. The prisoner had been employed by Mr. Blower on his farm, and was thrown out of employment when the farm was given up. On the 15th of November last, Mr. Heaton received aletter addressed to him, and couched in the following terms :—" Tyrant, prepare to meet thy God, for I hare sworn to blow thy brain out before mann weeks are over." The letter was signed "One of .T. W. Phillips's Tenant Farmers." Mr. Heaton coranmicated with the police, and suspicion having fallen on the prisoner, one of the force named Baker wrote a letter to the prisoner in the name of James Harvey offering him a situation. The prisoner answered this letter and signed the answer in his own name. Baker then went to him with his written answer and the threatening letter. The prisoner acknowledged the authorship of the former, but denied knowledge of the latter. Hit house was searched, and paper, envelopes, sealing-wax, and ink of a similar description with the paper, &e., of the threatening letter were found. A piece of paper was also found which seemed to form part of the sheet of paper on which the threatening letter had been written. Under Mr. Deuman's late Act the letter written by the prisoner to Baker was put in evidence for the purpose of comparing his handwriting with that if the threatening letter, and proving by that means the authorship of the latter, and Mr. Nethercliffe, the lithographer, was called as a scientific witness, and gave his opinion upon the examination of those two letters that the handwriting of each was identical, and he had no hesitation in speaking to that fact though the one letter was in a disguised and the other in a natural hand, by reason of some 14 or 15 characteristics which he was enaleled to discover in common, notwithstanding the brevity of the threatening letter. On cross-examination be stated _ . _  that he examined the letter for the purpose only of discovering similarities, and not to find out dissimilarities. . _ _  The learned judge in summing up referred to Mr. Denman's Act, and said that he doubted whether the Legislature could have inntemplated when they passed that Act that such a mode of procuring evidence of handwriting would have been resorted to as had been adopted in this case, and his Lordship added that he did not think that the good likely to result from it, would be adequate to the evil of the means of obtaining it. The evidence of experts might be taken by the jury to throw a light upon the examination which they ought themselves to make of the documents, but not as a substitution for the judgment which they should form for themselves.  The jury found the prisoner Not Guilty. Ills Lordship recommended the policeman Baker to discontinue the paactice of procuring evidence in the wanner alluded to ,hiring the trial of the case.