The Potteries Examiner : — 1871-06-17 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

OOO. With reference to the above, the Times has the following :—The interest felt in this case has increased rather than abated since the postponement of the trial of the aocueed until the next session of the Central Criminal Court. At the time of the applica• tion for this adjournment it wa, stated to Mr. Strati. Blackburn, by the counsel for the proaecution, that only on the previous day an important witness had been found, who, after visiting Seagate, had identified the prisoner; and that this person had been before the stand jury, but not before either the magistrate or the coroner. On the day following the postponement of the trial Mr. Pooh, the solicitor conducting the defence, wrote to the Solicitor to the Treasury, requesting that, without a moment'e delay, a copy of the evidence of any witnesses who were examined before the grand jury, and who were not examined either be' fore the magistrate or coroner, might be sent to him. 071 Saturday an official answer woe received, stating that no witnesses were examined before the grand jury who were pot examined before the magistrate and coroner. Prom a perusal of copies of the two affidavit* al.ru to by Mr. W. H. Pollard, a clerk in the Solicitor's Department of the Treasury, and Mr. Griffin, Superintendent of the It Division of Police, it appears that the grounds upon which application was made for the postponement of the trial were that a young man named Perren, a donkey driver on Blackheath, spoke to haviug wen the accused enter the shop of Mr. Thomas, of the Highetreet, 'Deptford, where the hammer which is supposed to have been need in the murder was purchased, on the night preceding the murder ; and also that the name of another person had a few hours previously been cominnuiosted to the pollce who could speak to having s.n the accused with a young woman in a field near the spot where the murdered girl, Maria Jane Cloueen, was found on the night of the murder. So far as this latter cireumetance is coneerued no additional evidence has been obtained by the police; but so far as regard's Puree's alleged assertion of having seen the accused outside the shop of Mr. Thomaa on the night in question, there is direct evidence to contradict it. It is necessary, in the intermit of justice, that this fact should be noticed, se in some of the mcwspapere of Saturday and Sunday a report was published that Perren was intimately acquainted with the accused, who, on the evening when the hammer was sold hail asked him to partake of drink, or, to use the words in the report, to "liquor up' with him. Why it should be necessary for one man intimately acquainted with another to enter a prison in order to identify that person, to convince himself of a fact about which he must have had no doubt whatever in his own mind (supposuig such an accriaintanee to have existed), will demand explanation. It may be mentioned that the accused expres.d a hope that a true bill would be found, as ' he desired the fullest and strictest inquiry into the , whole of the circumstanoss of the case, relying upon his entire innocence being proved by the witnesses who were to be .lled for the defence. It hita already been stated that on the day subsequent to being taken to Seagate the oceined was seized with an epileptic fit, on which occasion, although it has not , before been stated, blood ran from his month.  improper intercourse with the deceased, but added, "I know she kept company with a soldier?' The father of the dammed said the soldier spoken of ams not in London, but at Portsmouth. The coroner said the case would require s. full investigation, and he should adjoarn the court for a post-mortem examination to be made of the body, and for the attendance of the men who picked up the sunshade.