The Express. — 1851-03-04 (London, England)

CENTRAL CRIMINAL CO URT.  This court resumed its sittings yesterday, pursuant to the adjournment from the last session. The commissioners present at the opening of the business were the Right lion. the Lord Mayor, the Recorder, the Common Serjeant, Aldermen Hunter, Solomon., Sir C. Marshall. and Lawrence; Messrs. Garden and Hodgkinson, sheriffs; Messrs. Law and Elba, under-sheriffs, &e. The calendar at present contains the names of 147 prisoners. The Recorder, after the grand jury had been sworn, said, in addressing them, that it was a matter of c mgratulatiou that the eats of the calendar was such as would not render it necessary for him to detain them more than a few minutes, and indeed when he first came into court he anticipated that he should at once have been able to remit them to the performance of their duties. Since he had token his seat upon the bench, however, the depositions in two or three cases hail been put into his hands, to which he considered it necessary to call their attention by a few observations. He was glad to perceive that the calendar was not only light in numbers, but also in the quality of the crimes charged in it, and that it did nut contain a single charge of the highest nature known to the law—that of murder. There were, however, those cases involving the destruction of human life, which were of rather a peculiar character, and he thought it right very briefly to call their attention to those C 2506. In the first of them it appeared that the injury inflicted was of a very trifling description, and consisted merely of a puncture in the hand by a fork, and the death of the party appeared to have been owing to his bad state of body at the time he received the injury. It was his duty, however, to tell them, that if it should appear that the injury, although trifling in itself, still by reason of the bad state of body of the deceased eventually proved fatal, the party would still be liable to the charge of manslaughter. In the next cue it appeared that the deceased was suffering from a malady which must have terminated her existence within a comparatively short period, but notwithstanding this, if it should be established that the injury inflicted by tho accused party accelerated even to the very smallest possible degree the death of the deceased, he would be equally guilty of the crime of manslaughter, although the period of the dissolution might only have been anticipated by a very short interval. The third ease of manslaughter was one of an unusual character. It appeared that a little girl, seven years old, had been sent into the room occupied by the prisoner, to request her to be quiet, she being at the time intoxicated and making a great noise, and there could be no doubt that the prisoner gave her a quantity of gin, the effect of which was to cause immediate insensibility, and she was removed to the hospital, when• she died in three or four days afterwards. fliese being the facts, he should recommend the grand jury, if they should he of opinion from the evidence that would be laid before them that the prisoner had recklessly and incautiously administered a quantity of spirits to a girl of tender years, and that death was the result, to return a true bill, and he might remark, that the fact of the prisoner being in a state of intoxication at the time would not afford any excuse fur her conduct. The learned judge then said there was a case of a must disgusting character, in which a person filling the position of a gentleman, and a member of the College of Surgeons, was charged with felonious assaults upon no less than seven young girls. It would not be advisable fur him to make any reference to the disgusting evidence that appeared in the depositions, and he would merely remark that, if the grand jury should think that it was made out that there had been anything of what the law called durum., either by intimidation or by the administration of spirits and wine to the girls who were brought forward us witnesses, so as to hinder them from offering that resistance which otherwise would have been expected from them, he considered the grand jury would be justified in finding a true bill in all the cases in which these facts were made to appear. The grand jury then retired to their room, and the court proceeded to dispose of the business of thesessiou.  ItHAIEEKT AT