The Sun. — 1864-12-07 (London, England)

ASSIZE INTELLIGENCE,  OXFORD CIRCUIT.—STArFORD, The. 6. _ . .  (Before Mr Justice Bytes.) Charles Brough, 24, miner, was arraigned, charged with the wilful murder of George Walker, on the 27th of July last, at Bignall Hill, in the parish of Audrey. Mr Boughey and Mr Brindley were for the prosecution ; and the prisoner, having no counsel, Mr Pritchard was instructed by the Court to defend him. Deceased was 74 years of age, and was a broken-down farmer, living in a hut on the verge of a farm of some 120 acres, which at one time he for many years held as tenant. He had well-to-do relatives who were willing to afford him hospitable and comfortable shelter, but he preferred the hermit life which exposed him to the death which he ultimately suffered. He slept in a rude hut, with hay for his bed, and cultivated the piece of waste land on which his hermitage stochl. On the night before the murder a relative gave him half a crown, and a friend, named John Norcop, a labourer, spent some time with him in his rude home. When Norcop left him on that evening, the old man seemed to be in the enjoyment of his usual robust health. In fulfilment of his promise, Norcop resumed his visit on the following evening, between six and seven o'clock. Norcop then found the deceased lying a corpse, and his skull frightfully fractured, in front of his hut. His face also was much disfigured, and there wag a large quantity of blood, both within and without the hut. About two months before that time a gamekeeper named Obery bartered an old watch with the deceased, who wrote down the number (45,177) with chalk on a beam in his hovel! This watch Wei gone, and there was no money either on the deceased or in his wretched tenement. A de:cr;ption of the watch was circulated amongst the pawnbrokers of Tunstall, and at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, the 29th July, the prisoner offered a watch in pledge, at the shop of Mr Hulnre, of that town, which is only throo or four canals Cross. 44...,...ann of the murder. He was detained, and at night, when in custody, he sent for a policeman and made the following confession. : " I took the watch from the old men. I had had a quarrel with my father. He (the father) struck me, and I left the house, and went to the hovel to got a sleep. The old man came to the door, but would not let me in. I struck him on the head with a piece of wood which I found near to the door. I don't know if I knocked him down. lie began to call out, and I hit him again. Is he dead ?" The policemen said the old man was dead. The prisoner then continued—" I then struck a match and took the watch from him. It was about midnight. I did it myself. Nobody was with me." This confession he repeated in substance to a police-sergeant after he had been cautioned, and evidence in corroboration of it- truth was given. The prisoner's counsel pleaded that the number was not sufficient identification for the watch, inasmuch as other watches might be marked with the same figures. The confession, he said, was fanciful, as several recent confessions of murder had been, and the prisoner at the time was suffering from great pain, and was not master of himself. But if the jury should think the prisoner guilty, then he contended that he was guilty only of manslaughter, for he had said that he did not go to the hovel intending to kill the deceased, and did not intend to cause Ili; death when he struck him. The learned Judge, in summing up, expressed his belief that when the prisoner went to the deceased's hut, he did not meditate murder, but his lordship did not advert to a suggestion urged by Mr Pritchard, the prisoner's counsel, that the crime was that of manslaughter only, The Jury found the prisoner guilty of wilful murder, and Mr Justice Byles sentenced him to death in the usual form.