The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1848-05-23 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

THE CONVICTS ANNETTE MEYERS AND MARY ANN HUNT.—These criminals, who have so long been confined under sentence of death in Newgate, were yesterday removed to Tothill Fields prison, where they are to undergo: two years' imprisonment, and then to be transported fcir life.  On Wednesday, a terrific thunder storm occurred at Whittlesea, and the spire of the church was struck. The south-west pinnacle was rent from top to bottom, and must be taken down, and it is feared that the spire will have sustained extensive damage. The spire was one of the handsomest in England. On Thursday, at the Glasgow High Court of Justiciary, David Gibson, a doctor of medicine, was tried for culpable homicide, in granting a false certificate as to the state of health of a prisoner. He was found not guilty, and the verdict was received with marks of satisfaction by all present, and Dr. Gibson was highly congratulated. The stupendous works of the new steam-basin at Portsmouth, having been completed, the Admiralty have decided upon a formal opening of this great national undertaking on the 25th instant. It is confidently expected that her Majesty and his Royal Highness Prince Albert will honour the ceremony with this presence. In the rough plate glass manufacture, an improvement or simplification has been patented by Mr. Jas. Hartley, of Sunderland, viz.,—the transfer of the molten " metal" by ladling directly from the melting-pot to the table, without the use of a cistern or a second heating. The plates so made are then annealed by piling, as for crown and sheet glass, and not with the usual costly furnaces. It is reported that the Bank of England is now in possession, through the sheriff of the county of Glamorgan, of all the property at Cwmavon copper-works, which they hold for a debt of upwards of £276,000. All the men in the governor and company's employ in their copper-works at Landore, near Swansea, have been discharged.— Welshman. A trifle, called The Fast Man, by Mr. Albert Smith, was produced at the Lyceum, on Thursday. It was an attempt to represent the reckless, disreputable shifts of a London scamp, " a fast man," contrasted with the habits of his friend, a person of an opposite description. These personages, Jack Stunner and Simpson Slowcoach, were acted by Buckstone and C. Mathews. A most respectable body of London merchants, bankers, and traders,—including the Barings, the Gurneys, the Hankeys, the Souths, the Hoares, the Robartses, and other city magnates—has summoned a public meeting, at the London Tavern for Saturday the 27th instant, " of all persons desirous of upholding the system of free labc,ur in the British colonial possessions, and of preventing this country from becoming, dependent for its supply of sugar and coffee upon, the extension of cultivation 17/ means of slavery and tits, slave trade."'  The sale of Mr. John A. Ballantyne's library took place in Edinburgh, on Saturday. The catalogue included the proof sheets of several of the " Waverley Novels." The manuscript of the " Black Dwarf" brought twenty-eight guineas ; Sir Walter's proofs of his " Life of Napoleon," nine volumes, were sold for forty-five guineas ; and twelve volumes of proof of the " Waverley Novels ". fetched  forty-one guineas.