The Sun. — 1870-03-09 (London, England)

THAMES.  CUTTING AND WOUNDING.—NARROW ESCAPE OF A PRISONER.—Auguste Guemal, aged 24 years, of 54, Pell-street, St. George's-in-the-East, was brought up on remand, charged with feloniously cutting and wounding Henri Benden, a tailor, of No. 23, Arch-court, Bridgewater-square, Barbican.  The parties are Germans, and it appears were unknown to each other until a few days since. The prosecutor and another young man were is ti~ ellclose-square, and the prisoner, without any Provo• cation, came up to Benden and challenged him to fight. The prosecutor refused and tried to get away from him, on which the prisoner took a shoemaker's knife from his pocket and stabbed the prosecutor on Lis kft shoulder, inflicting a severe wound, from which the blood flowed profusely. Mr. Ashley William Barrett, house surgt.on, saw the prisoner for the first time on Thursday last. There was a wound on his left shoulder 31 inches iu length, and the same in depth. He thought the wound was inflicted with soma violence, and there was a degree of clinger about it. The muscular fibres were severed.  Hugh Andrews, a p )lice-constable, arres'ed the prisoner, ycsterdny, nudEr very peculiar circumstances. lie h"ard ho was in a house in Wellclose-square, and went after him. The prisoner fled, went over the roofs of three houses, and fell from the roof of a three-storied house, more than fifty feet high, in:o the yard below it. He thought he would have been killed, but the prisoner's fall was broken, and he went through theiroof of a washhouse, acd alighted in safety on the ground within, and without any injury except a few bruises. The prisoner said he did strike the prusccutor, but did not intend to hurt him—if ho had he should I have killed him.  Mr. Lushiugton committed the prisoner for trial.  The murder of Mr. Voorhees by Chambers in Brooklyn,following so close on the murder of Townsend in New York, both singularly aimless and unprovoked, has excited the greatest indignation, and the New York papers are writing furiously on the subject. The Citizen pronounces a death sentence on Reynolds without further trial or reference to any evidence, winding up with the statement that Reynolds must die. The Evening Telegram does the same kind office for Chambers, and will listen to no extenuating circumstances. If the man be mad, so much the greater necessity for hanging him. That no injustice may be done the Evening Telegram, we give its own words from its issue of the 17th Feb. :—" One of the obscure city papers is trying its best to prove that Chambers, tht. scoundrel who so brutally murdered Mr. Voorhees, in Brooklyn, on Sunday night, is a lunatic. If he is a lunatic, the best way to get rid of him is to bang him at once. These fellows, who are sane enough every day in the week to carry on a lucrative business and manage their affairs successfully, and then become lunatics after drinking a few glasses of wine on a .!-..unday, should be dealt with far more rigorously than the common prowlers who would murder a man for a ten-cent stamp. A person has some chance for his life when he meets a man whose appearance betrays his brutal instinct, but he has none whatever when a gentleman' meets him as a friend to talk with him pleasantly while sober, and murder him if rum happens to get the best of him." •