Glasgow Courier. — 1846-05-30 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

HAMMERSMITH.  Monday having been appointed for the second examination of Henry Norman, the self-accused robber and murderer, who stands charged with having stolen the sum of £s2' the property of Mr. William Hoof, builder, &c., Madeley House, Kensington, and also on suspicion of having been concerned in the murder of Mr. Robert Westwood, the watch-maker, in Princes' Street, Soho, on the 3d of June, 1839, the court was, from its opening, crowded almost to suffocation by respectable persons, anxious to witness the proceedings. Amongst the most prominent was Lord Kensington, who was accommodated with a chair near the magistrate. Our reporter was informed that there were also present persons who were acquainted with the prisoner while in the Customs' in Jamaica, the agent of the firm whose store Norman is believed to have robbed at New-York, and also other parties named in the tragedy written by the prisoner, and found amongst his papers by the police. The prisoner was brought to the court from the Westminster Bridewell, to which he was remanded, by Price, the jailer, about an hour before the opening of the court. Shortly after 2 o'clock Mr. G. Clive, the magistrate, took his seat, and some charges of a minor character having been gone into, Henry Norman was placed at the bar. He was dressed the same as at his first examination, and maintained the same degree of unconcern and self-possession which he evinced on the previous occasion.  Mr. Edward Apps Smith, chief clerk to Mr. W. Hoof, repeated the evidence he gave at the first examination on the previous Monday, as to his having given the prisoner, on the forenoon of the 15th of April last, £52 in sovereigns and half sovereigns, to take to the works of the Imperial Gas Company, in the King's Road, Fulham, and pay the men at work there, and his not having returned, or the witness having seen him again until he was in custody. The prisoner, witness afterwards ascertained, did not take the money to the gas works, but absconded with it. A day or two after the 18th, Mr. Hoof received a letter addressed to him in the prisoner's handwriting, of which the following is a copy : " Sir,—l have to inform you that lam not what I represented myself to you, when I came to your office, and gave you a slight history of myself, but you may understand that it was quite impossible that I could remain a clerk In your service. At 17 years of age I entered the Queen's service in the 'Customs' of Jamaica, and continued robbing there of many thousands of pounds before I was 21 years of age. I afterwards went to the United States of America, where I committed numerous crimes, not even hesitating at murder,' and finished off by robbing a pawnbroker's shop of about £l,OOO worth of money and property. Since my return to this country, I have committed so many robberies in different places, and so many people know my renown, that you must have discovered it. Circumstances, over which human beings can have no control, have made me what I am. The principal is my having had the misfortune to have the most degraded drunken monster for a father that ever poor devil had. What I might have been had not the Almighty made me the son of a despicable wretch, I dare not think of, or I should drive myself mad. Cresar, in his account of his Gallic wars, says, he took 1800 cities by assault, and slew 1000,000 of men. I have committed more than 1800 distinct robberies, and have been concerned in five murders, besides many other atrocities, which, on a small scale, entitles me to consider myself as great as Cresar. Fortune sent him into the world, nobly born, in fortunate times, to push his fortune; the same jade sent me into the world, the son of a low pawnbroker, and that scoundrel took care that I should not have a chance of being anything higher in the social scale. Mr. —'s address is 47, —, Soho Square, at a Mr. —'s, picture-frame maker. If you are lucky enough to catch him sober, he will inform you of the truth of wliat I tell you, or you can ascertain it by calling at the Custom-house, Thames Strt et. Ask to see the Secretary. The greatest gamester, felon, villain, murderer, swindler, and scoundrel in the world, bids you farewell for ever.  • "