The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1843-02-21 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

WHOLESALE SHEEP STEALING.—On Sunday week, an street, Salford, where he carried on the business of a gro.cer, Irishman named O'Neil, and a youth left this town, and it was found that upwards of £l6O, principally in one and about dusk arrived at a field occupied by a tenant on the two pound notes, a gold watch, and other articles had beer Hornby Castle Estate. In that field was a flock of fifty- taken from a drawer in the room in which he and Mrs. Lit. seven sheep, and these the two coolly drove into the road, tlewood slept. The two servants were found dead in the and thence, by moonlight, onto Skerton, which is a sort of kitchen, the elderly woman sitting in a chair, with her head suburb to Lancaster. In this place there is a croft, having bowed down upon her breast, and the girl lying on her face in one corner a small roofed building of four sides, with no on the floor. Both their skulls were dreadfully fractured opening but a door. Into this place the whole flock of fifty- with a poker and a cleaver, and altogether the murder apseven sheep were driven, and the consequence of their close peared to have been of the most cold-blooded and determined confinement was that before Morning three Poor things were character. From various circumstances of strong suspicion suffocated. O'Neil contrived to sell the three dead sheep. five men, named James Ashcroft, the elder, David Ashcroft, In the course of Monday O'Neill made desperate efforts to James Ashcroft, the younger, William Holden, and John dispose of his sheep, and hearing that a Mr. Walker was likely Robinson, werevpreliended, and tried at Lancaster, before to be a custorper the flock was driven through the town from Baron Richards, at the August assizes (Friday, September north to south for Mr. Walker's inspection. Mr. Walker sth,) 1817. Although not direct, the evidence was strongly in conversing with O'Neill suspected something was wrong, circumstantial, and the jury found the three Ashcrofts and especially when the 'attar offered to sell the whole lot at 12s. William Holden guilty, but acquitted Robinson. On the 6d. a head, while the real value was st least 30s,—as the flock following Monday (Sept. Bth) the Ashcrofts and Holden were consisted of fine ewes all far advanced in lamb. Mr. Walker executed, but every one of them, " calling their God to witcontrived to keep O'Neill talking until he sent for the superin- ness," died protesting their innocence and singing a hymn. tendent of the borough pace, when the man wasgiven intocus- Nevertheless the public were perfectly satisfied of their guilt, tody, and was afterwards committed to the assizes. It appears about which there never seemed to be a doubt, until Thurslikely that O'Neil was deceived by the appearance of the day, the 9th instant, when an old man, aged 74, named John flock, he himself clearly not knowing anything about farming Holden, (the uncle, we believe, of the man who was hung,) matters. The whole were in lamb, and no doubt he mistook living at a very disreputable place, called Egypt, on the right them for fat sheep, A more audacious r9Pbery was never hand side of the road between Leigh arid Chowbent, finding heard of. It certainly makes good the old adage—" the himself on the point of death, confessed to two women. more public the more private." If the fellow had contented ~whom he called to the bed-side for the purpose, that he was himself with two or three out of the flock be knew he the perpetrator of the murder above referred to, but that be . should be suspected, but who would think of suspecting a did not commit the robbery. On the following day he died. man and a boy driving a whole flock before them in the open 'Ms subject is far too painful for comment.—Manchester roads?--Lancaster Gazette. Courier. •