Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1880-01-31 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

THE HA.RPURHEY MURDER. TWO MEN ARRESTED.  The Plymouth police, assisted by two Manchester policemen, arrested two men, one of whom, named Robert Haild, aliaB Wait, is suspected of having committed the murder of Sarah Jane Roberts, at Harpurhey, Manchester. Haild was a coal dealer in a small way at Manchester. He had tramped to Plymouth in order to emigrate.  When taken to the station the warrant was read to Haild, and he said he " Supposed they wanted him for the Manchester murder, but it was all a mare's nest, as he had never heard anything about it until last night, ,",^1 he read it in the papers." Letters in his own er,id were found on him, the writing of which was said to correspond with that of the letter sent to decoy Mr. Greenwood, and the landlady :of the lodging-house where the arrest was made states that she washed a pair of trousers and a shirt for Haild, which were stained, but she does not know whether they were blood stains or not.  On Tuesday Haild was brought up at the Manchester Police Court, when hundreds of persons of both sexes who were unable to gain admission to the court, congregated in Cotham-street, the approach to the front entrance, in the hope of seeing the prisoner either leave or enter the building. The only charge preferred against him was that of perjury in a declaration made by him in connection with an assisted passage to Australia, and to this he pleaded guilty. The prisoner was remanded until Wednesday. On the latter day he asked whether he could not have a "fair and just chance" of clearing himself of the charge of murder preferred against him; he could clear himself within forty. eight hours. Sir J. I Mantell informed him that there was no charge of murder preferred against him.—The charge was one of perjury. Prisoner replied that he had already pleaded guilty to that. He was then remanded to Tuesday next. It is stated that the police have not yet completed their inquiries about the prisoner in connection with the murder. The man Laycock denies having made any statement to the lodginghouse keeper at Plymouth, which had been published, casting suspicions upon his companion Haild. A correspondent says a belief in Haild's innocence is becoming stronger every day in Manchester. Some of the Manchester correspondents also insert that the decoy letter was written grammatically, and that Haild has no good grammar in his former letters. Mrs. Sprague, the keeper of the lodging-house at which the prisoner Haild and his companions stayed while they were in Plymouth, re-affirms the entire truth of the statement she made to a reporter of the Western Morning News. She says Laycock was heard by the inmates of her house to say that he and the Manchester man came from Liverpool, and also to make an exclamation that he knew what the police came for when they captured Haild, and that it was the Manchester murder. Mrs. Sprague denies that she ever told the police positively that the marks on the trowsers she washed were blood, and says she has been misunderstood in the supposition that she said she was two hours scrubbing tho trowsers. The work, she states, did not take so long. With regard to her whole statempnt, however, she positively repeats what she had previously stated. She has not yet received any communication, direct or indirect, from the Lancashire police.