Middlesbrough & Stockton Gazette and General Advertiser. — 1872-01-04 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

WILFUL MURDER DY A MOTIIER.—On Tuesday, Ellen Gardiner, aged 19, who had been cook in the service of Mr Bayliss, iron fencing maker, Compton-road, Wolverhampton, was committed for trial at the next Staffordshire Assizes, upon a coroner's warrant, charged with the wilful murder of her infant child. Mr J. H. Love, surgeon to the police force, deposed that the child had died partly from suffocation, by having been intentionally tightly clutched about the throat, and partly from deliberate injuries to the head, which had fractured the skull, causing a wound two and a half inches in length. These evidences were seen upon a post mortem examination. After the murder the body of the child was cast into a stream some distance from the house. The identity of the child is established; and since her arrest the mother is believed to have made some kind of a confession.  MR WARD BEECHER'S Yourn.—The Rev Henry Ward Beecher, in a recent " leaure-room talk" on "The religious duty of Thanksgiving," gave the following account of his early experience as a minister. —" I do not believe that to-day I feel as thankful for the comforts of my house as I did when I first began to preach, and had two rooms, and felt that they were mine, and went around among the people of the neighbourhood with the thought, 'Was there ever a man so happy as I am ?" Well, I may as well tell you—when I began to preach I never expected to do much. But I meant to do as well as I could. I never expected to go anywhere. I was asked to cross the river from Cincinnati, and preach in Covington, and I went over and began to preach there. I did not know but I was going to stay there. And I was perfectly willing to stay. But I was soon called by a woman to Lawrenceburg. She was the factotum of the whole church. And I went there and spoke to a well-nigh empty building. I was settled over a town with two distilleries and twenty devils in it. I was very poor. There was no patrimony coming to me, as you know. The moment I was out of the seminary I was without my father's support, and was obliged to take care of myself. I had a salary; but it was a salary of only 400 dollars. And I took half of that to go to New England to get married with. And as the parish paid only half of it, and the other half was to come from the Missionary Society, I found myself very short of funds. I had just 18 cents in my pocket when I came back. I was taken up by a good Methodist brother for about a week, and then I got these two rooms to which I have alluded. They were upstairs. One was the kitchen, cellar, and sitting room; the other ARS the library, bedroom, and parlour, so that we had six rooms, call each three. The cellar was made by putting things under the bed; and the other rooms were added by sundry devices. You who go into flush houses, furnished by your grandpapas and grandmammas, do not know anything about the joys of housekeeping. Persons ought to begin at the bottom to know what those joys are. And I began down there. I had no idea that I could preach. I never expected that I could accomplish much. I merely went to work with the feeling, I will do as well as luau, and I will stick to it, if the Lord pleases, and fight His battle the best way I know how.' And I was as thankful as I could be. Nobody ever sent me a spar-rib that I-did not thank God for the kindues which was shown me. I recollect that *hen Judge gave me his cast-off clothing I felt that I was sumptuously clothed. I wore old coats and socond-hand shirts for two or three years; and I was not above it either—although sometimes, as I was physically a somewhat well-developed man, and the judge was thin, and his logs were slim, they were rather a tight fit."