The Miner. — 1863-05-02 (London, England)

THE MURDER IN ST. GILES'S.  This crime has an unfortunate appearance of carrying out its complete analogy to the murder of Eliza Grim. wood, many years since, in the Waterloo-road; that is to say, there is some ground for fearing that it will not be brought home to the guilty person. We do not say that the police are to blame in the event of failure. They have undoubtedly a very hard case to deal with, and any charge of negligence against them should be specific and clearly defined. But, though difficult, the task of discovering the murderer of the girl Emma Jack. son does not seem altogether hopeless. The obstacles are formidable, but at the same time they are tolerably plain, and they should therefore be overcome at any cost. Trustworthy evidence appears to have been altogether wanting, the parents of the unhappy victim being either unwilling or unable to furnish any important facts respecting her companions or her habits, at times when she absented herself from home. They have been in a respectable position, the father having held the office of steward to a nobleman; and the hopelessly vicious conduct of the girl had destroyed all confidence between them and her. We have already stated that the vivid and seemingly credible narrative volunteered by a girl of the town has been disproved in every particular. It was a most ingenious tissue of falsehoods, and it happened to fit the theory most in favour with the officers who have the case in hand. But a careful sifting of the story has shown it to be destitute of any single grain of truth; and the police are now on another track, which, if it does not look so promising, is, at all events, less likely to lead men astray. So infamous is the den in which the murder was committed, that we felt no hesitation in suggesting that one of the inmates might have been the perpetrator of the deed. We have even entertained as a possibility the idea of the criminal being a woman. Two or three facts point to this presumption. But against it is the rigorous precision with which the blows were struck. Either of three wounds would have instantly silenced the victim. One cut or stab severed the windpipe; another penetrated the internal jugular; and a third, which must have been dealt with great force, entered the spinal column. There was a fourth wound, not mortal in its character, but still caused by no indecisive blow. On the whole, any careful observer of the slight array of circumstantial evidence in this case will incline to hold by the first and most obvious opinion that the murderer, one of the opposite sex, led the girl to this atrocious sink of vice with a deliberate purpose of taking away her life. It is in the consequent supposition of a prior intimacy between Emma Jackson and her murderer that the main hope of bringing him to justice consists. Assuming that we have hold of the truth so far, it will be strange if, by diligent inquiry, some facts cannot be gleaned with respect to the murdered woman's anteeadgnts.—Daily Telegraph. -  - On Thursday Sergeant Glass, of the Cardiff police, apprehended a man at Newport, Monmouthshire, on suspicion of being the murderer of the unfortunate woman at St. Giles's. It appears that Superintendent Stockdale had an intimation from Bristol to the effect that informadon had been received in that city from the Irish constabulary, of the arrival in Cork from London of a man who answered the description given of the supposed murderer, that he left Cork for Bristol by steamer, and that inquiries made at the latter place proved that he had left by a small vessel in the coal trade for Cardiff. The Cardiff police soon traced the person described, and found that, after pledging a pair of boots, he had gone on foot to Newport. When charged with the crime the man made the following remarkable statement :—That he had gone to Cork to act as hangman in the recent execution in that city, for which he received £6 and his expenses—that he was there ten days—that he went on the spree and lost all his money—that the Governor of Cork Gaol gave him a suit of clothes—and that he then left and came to Newport via Bristol, as already stated, intending to go on tramp to London. The accused was conveyed to Cardiff.