Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1888-10-13 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

ANOTHER SIMILAR CRIME.  In Vienna attention is being called to a crime of an exactly similar kind which preoccupied the public mind in Austria for nearly three years. A Galician Jew named Ritter was accused in 1884 of having murdered and mutilated a Christian woman in a village near Cracow. The mutilation was like that perpetrated on the bodycd the woman Chapman, and at the trial numbers of witnesses deposed that among certain fanatical Jews there existed a superstition to the effectthat if a Jew became intimate with a Christian woman he would atone for his offence by slaying and mutilating the object of Ids passion. Sundry passages of the Talmud were quoted which, according to the witnesses, expressly sanctioned this form of atonement. The trial caused an immense sensation, and Ritter, being found guilty, was sentenced to death. The judges of the Court of Appeal, however, feeling that the man was the victim of popular error and anti-Semitic prejudice, ordered a new trial upon some technicality. Again a jury pronounced against Ritter, and once more the Court of Appeal found a flaw in the proceedings. A third trial took place, and for the third time Ritter was condemned to be hanged, but upon this the Court of Appnal quashed the sentence altogether, and Ritter was released, after having been in prison 37 months. There is no doubt that the man was innocent.  In the reign of James I. of Scotland, there was born in East Lothia, a village a few miles from Edinburgh, Sawney Beane, the son of poor, but hard working people. Evincing from boyhood a hatred of all labour, and displaying every kind of vicious quality, he at an early age abandoned his home and fled to Galloway. He was accompanied by a fit companion for his crimes in the person of a young woman a native of the same village. The home of this pair was in a cave of about a mile in length and of considerable breadth, the mouth of which was washed by the sea, the tide sometimes penetrating the cave a I distance of 200 yards. The victims were waylaid under cover of night on their way from country fairs, or, in the case of isolated travellers across the country, were openly attacked in daylight. The same soul-sickening mutilation was inflicted in each case ; the abdomen was cut open, and the entrails dragged out, and the body carried to the cave. To prevent detection they murdered every traveller they robbed, and for years they continued their horrible calling. In this manner, the chronicler tells us, they lived until they had eight sons and six daughters, 18 grandsons, and 14 granddaughters—all the offspring of immorality. After a long career of murder the gang were captured by King James, who, roused to action by the long immunity of the criminals from detection, headed a body of troops, and succeeded with bloodhounds in unearthing from the cave the whole vile tribe, to whom was meted out a death agreeable with the life they had let The men, says the historian, had their entrails thrown into the fire, their hands and legs were severed from their bodies, I and they were permitted to bleed to death. The mother of the whole crew, the daughters, and grandchildren, after being spectators of the death of the men, were cast into three separate fires and consumed to ashes.