The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1872-08-24 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

REIIARICABLE AFFAIR.  At the Gloucester asslzas, Elias front, aged 13, has been chsu:ge.d with the willful murder of William Nicholls on the  March.  It appeared from the opening that both the prisoner and the boy whom be was charged with mnrdering were inmates of the Stroud Union Workhouse, and that the prisoner was placed somewhat in charge of the boy .Nicholls, who was aged only eight years, and who laboured under an infirmity which rendered the charge of him a revolting employment. On the day in question the boys in the workhouse, 42 in all, were taken out for a walk by the schoolmaster to • wood about a mile and a half trona the workhouse, and there employed themselves in digging primrose roots. The schoolmaster used a whistle to collect the boys, and, having collected them, went part of the way home before he found that he had only 41 boys with him, and that the missing boy was Nicholls. Unavailing search was made on that and for several succeeding days by the workhouse authorities, assisted by the police, when the prisoner, who had been very restless and altered in manner since the 18th instant, made a statement to the effect that he knew about the matter, as a man sitting on a stile had beckoned to them while at the wood, and had taken away the boy Nicholls. This was only the first of • long series of so-called confessions, all of which proved false, nobody being ever found at the places indicated by the prisoner at different times, as the place where he had left him. On one occasion the prisoner said that Nicholls had eaten poison berries, and that he (the prisoner) had covered him with beech leaves. The body was found in a cattle p :ol near the wood on April 7, and on a post-mortem examination being made, it appeared that the cause of dea h had been drowning, and that the boiy had probably been in the water ever since March 18. On April 9 the prisoner was brought before the magistrate, but the case was disc barged, and on the evening of that day he applied to the master of the workhouse for writing paper, and he then wrote and handed in the following extraordinary statement :  "And I told him to come along with me, and he came and when he got there he stood up by the pound. I shoved him into the pound and then i ran away from him and down the waterside as fare as i could get and when the seecount wisel blew I came up sweting and huring the other boys were gob n home and the schoolmaster saw me coming up behind him and lie husk me where i had been and i send down there a little way and he seed come on, and it was Elias Hunt what made away with W. NI:no!e and I told W. Little and G. Bennett W. Hopkins ami I contest en Apel the 11 and they knowd a wake bef,e. We went for a wake and that is all the trod and nothing else but the tract and it was me that did hit. "ELIAS HUIsT."  Upon this further confes don be was committed to take his trial for the murder. The above facts were proved at the trial, and some evidence of malice was adduced by the statement of several boys, inmates of the workhouse, who deposed to having on some occasion heard the prisoner say that he thought he should make away with the boy Nicholls.  Mr. Motteram addreesed the jury for the defence, and  The leanied Judge, having summed up the case, the jury Acreiteed the prisoner, who appeared perfectly careless and unconcerned during the whole of his triaL