The Sun. — 1860-08-13 (London, England)

THE TVALIVOR7IH MURDER.  The plea of insanity is definitely fixed on by the friends of William Godfrey Youngman as the one to be used and relied on at his forthcoming trial for the monstrous offence with which he stands charged, and they lose no opportunity since his commitment for trial, to speak of several of the family who have been confined, and died from insanity. At first the malady was said to be confined to the father's family, and it was mentioned that the grandfather of the accused had been so afflicted, and actually died while insane; and now it is added that he has inherited the complaint maternally, his aunt, that is, his mother's sister, having died at Peckham Lunatic Asylum. Whether this be true or false, it is quite clear that, neither in his manner since his apprehension, nor in the numerous letters which he had addressed to the unfortunate young woman, Maria Wells Streeter, is there the slightest indication of a disordered intellect. From the inquiries made by the police, it appears that it is four years since he first met Maria Streeter at Lewisham when they were fellow-servants in the establishment of a gentleman named Hadley, and though he had then professed some affection for her, he made no offer of marriage, or even of love; on the contrary, they parted in the ordinary way, and it is quite certain that from that time until the 18th of June last (as will be seen by his letter to her) he had neither seen nor heard anything of her. The declaration of the young woman who was present at his last examination, which declaration is capable of legal proof, shows he not only professed violent love, and was about to be married, to another, in February, 1859, and was only prevented from carrying out his intention by his apprehension and conviction of felony on stealing his master's plate. About the middle of June last the prisoner called on a friend of Miss Streeter, at Lewisham, ' and expressed a particular desire to have her address, bat her friend, who never entertained any great opinion of the young man, at first refused to let him know anything of her whereabouts, and it was only his assuring her that he " knew of something considerably to her advantage" that she gave the address of a gentleman in Hyde Park-gardens into whose service she went after leaving Lewisham. He at once proceeded to the house of the gentleman indicated, and having there again expressed a great anxiety to see her to communicate something to her benefit, he got her address. What his object was in thus seeking the poor girl out, and bringing her under the same roof with him in her last biding place on earth, is a matter which must be left to the reader's imagination.—Observer.  The Asiatic telegraph has now been carried down to Jezirah, on the Tigris, a hundred miles north of Mosul. As the works along this interval between the Kurdish and Mesopotamian capitals are being rapidly pushed on by Messrs. M'Callum, it is expected that before the end of this month messages will be transmissible direct from Stamboul to Nineve. " Shades of Jonas and Sardanapalus," says the Levant Herald, " what an advance on the slow couriers of three thousand years ago 1" • [