Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1892-12-24 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

ATTEMPTED MURDER.  At the Central Criminal Court, on Friday, Albert Edward Hawthorne, 21, barman, was indicted for maliciously wounding Mary Ann Johnson, with an intent to murder.—Counsel said that on the evening of December Ist the prisoner met the prosecutrix in the neighbourhood of Pearl-street, Commercial-road, and accompanied her home. An appointment was made for a meeting the next evening, which the woman kept. She again took the man to her rooms. An inmate of the room adjoining that to which the parties went heard them enter, and, after a short conversation, she beard the woman scream. The prisoner, on her calling out, left the room and proceeded to leave the house. The prosecutrix was seen coming from the room, her hands applied to her throat, which was streaming with bb od from a wound. Some passers by seeing the woman outside the housg,, and the prisoner hurrying away, went to stop him. On being seized the man became very violent, threw one of the men to the ground, but the latter managed to seize hold of his clothing and drag him also to the ground. Assistance was obtained, and the man was secured. He was perfectly sober; he made no resistance to the police, but threatened to do something for the men who had stopped him, unless they left him alone. The veraon of the prosecutrix was that as she was with the man in the room, she saw him put his right hand to his side pocket, and, producing a razor, he made a cut on l'er throat with it. She screamed "Police " and "Murder." The prisoner got up and stood by the bedside. The razor fell to the floor, but he picked it up, and made another attempt to cut her throat. She struggled, in the course of which her lingers were cut. The man left the room. She followed downstairs into the court, where she told the inmates of the house that the prisoner had cut her throat. The prisoner made no reply to the charge. He was placed in a cell at the station and a watch was placed over him. In the evening prisoner said to the policeman in whose charge he was, "I intended to do it; I put the razor in my pocket this morning. She is always following me when I come from places of amusement. I have been on the 'spree ' for a fortnight." There appeared to be no motive for the crime.—The prosecutrix was then called, and she detailed the circumstances under which the assault was committed.—ln cross-examination, she denied that she put her hand into the pocket of the prisoner and attempted to rob him, thinking that the razor case was a jewel case.—The jury found the prisoner guilty of unlawful wounding, and he was sentenced to 18 months' hard labour.  The last of the Malatestas of Riznini has just died in the person of Antonio of Padua, a Trappist Monk, et the age of 96 years. He was an exile from Italy after the Revolution of 1831, in which he had taken part.  On Friday morning a terrible fatality occurred at New Blackburn Technical Schools, Glasgow. A scaffolder named Macrae, whose duty it was to test the chair tackle used by the men engaged on the summit of the building, jumped into the chair while it was at the top, exclaiming that he would rather be killed than anybody else. The cathead was not properly fixed, and he was pitched out, falling a distance of 'loft., his brains being dashed out against the basement wall. As a cattle deaier named Hackford was returning home from Lough cattle market late at night he drove into the river Lud. The man, his horse, and a cart-load of pigs were drowned.