The Potteries Examiner : — 1876-11-25 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

CONFESSION OF MURDER, AND ROBBERY.  On Saturday a charge of murder and robbery was in. vestigated by the magistrates at Wolverhampton. The accused were a puddler, named Edward Smith, aged 33, Emma Wahken, 35, and Eliza Edge, 30. They all live in a court well known as the resort of women of all re. pate. It had come to the knowledge of the police that seven weeks ago a stranger in the town was robbed of between £3OO and .2.100; but the information was so indefinite that the police some awaiting information, expecting that the person who had been robbed would seek their help. On Friday afternoon, however, the matter ARSIMIC,I another and more serious phase. The woman Waldron gave herself in charge to the police as having been concerned, not only in this same robbery, but likewise in the murder of the person robbed. Her statement is that about two months ago she, the other two prisoners, and two more women, all living in the same court, locally known as the "Cat Yard," robbed in that locality, at eight o'clock at night, a cattle dealer, whom she believes to have come from Ireland, of £3OO in gold and notes; and that after the robbery Smith and herself conducted him to the canal, which is close at hand, and Smith pushed him into the wata. The stealer was too drunk, she says, to help himself and was drowned. By this time there is reason to believe it was eleven o'clock at night. The interval had been spent mainly in carousing in part at a public house. Waldron accounts for the greater part of the £3OO by the way in winch she nays it was divided between them. Her own share was £72 10s., and Smith's £B3, of which £55 was in £5 not, s. Smith and the three women went, she says, the day after the murder, to Liverpool to change the notes. Before the magistrates she pleaded "not guilty," and no, too, did her fellow prisoners, one of whom, Edge, was defended by a soli. ester. The police have ascertained that Smith and the women went, it is believed, to Manchester at the time Waldron speaks of their going to Liverpool; that on their return Smith was married in Wolverhampton to one of the women whom Waldren implicates and that Waldren herself about the same time added £3O to her account at the Post Office Savings Bank. The murdered Inan is described as of respectable appearance and corpulent; and collateral information would lead to the inference that he had lost two front teeth. After the magisterial proceedings the police proceeded to drag the canal, and they were so occupied when the darkness came on. The poisoners stand remanded for a week.  Circumstances have come to light which tend to show that the cattle-dealer supposed to have been murdered at Wolverhampton by being pushed into the canal, after being robbed by some women in Cat's Yard, is still alive. Ha seems to have got out of the canal, and to have been led, about eleven o'clock at night, too public.house frequented by dealers, where he was known as a easterner. He was then covered with mud and slime from the canal, but had no recollection of what had occurred from the time be was drinking with the women till he was brought to the public-house. He discovered that he had been robbed of £3OO he had received that day for a herd of cattle he had sold, but requested the landlord to keep the matter a profound secret—a desire ho repeated in a letter addressed to the landlord during the present week. At present the dealer's name is withheld ; but the whole of the facts are expected to come out on Saturday, when the man Smith and the women Waldren and Edge, who are charged with murder and robbery in connection I with the case, will be brought up on remand.