The Glasgow Chronicle. — 1849-04-11 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

THE STA.NFIELD-HALL MURDERS.  TRIAL AND CONVICTION OF RUSH.  The trial of Rush, for the Stanfield-hall murders, before the Norfolk Assizes, terminated on Wednesday, having lasted six days, and created a most extraordinary sensation throughout the country. We subjoin a summary of the case. The prisoner acted as his own counsel, and attempted, in a defence of unprecedented length, to prove his innocence. But the circumstantial evidence was so clear, the presumptions against him so strong, that the jury had no hesitation in making up their minds; for after a retirement of only six minutes, they returned with a unanimous verdict of guilty. The solemn sentence of the law was then pronounced upon the unhappy man, who was ordered to be executed. The charge of the Judge was most affecting, and must have aroused the prisoner to a sense of his awful crimes, if any thing could make impression on a heart so dead and hardened, an so impenetrable to shame or remorse. as that of Rush proved itself to be throughont the entire course of the proceedings. A. case more atrocious, more loathsome, and attended with such a complication of villany, has seldom occurred. To the last hour, the murderer assumed the cool effrontery of innocence, and even threw a deeper stain of ignominy over his revolting crimes by the tissue of incoherent falsehoods and perjuries by which he seems to have flattered himself he could succeed in transferring his own guilt to others. As the Learned Judge remarked, the heart less assassin commenced with a system of fraud in endeavouring to cheat his landlord, to whom he owed a debt of deep gratitude; he followed up that by making the unfortunate woman whom he seduced an instrument by which he might commit the crime of forgery; and having done that, he ended his criminal career by murdering the son and grandson of his benefactor. The circumstances of the trial will not be easily forgotten. Of Eliza Chestney, the poor girl whose life Rush had attempted to take in so dastardly a manner, it may be said that she was as one risen from the dead to bear witness against him. Pale and emaciated from the effect of her wound, she was borne on a litter into the court, into the presence of the man who had directed his murderous weapon against her life, and of those who were sitting as judges of his fate. One would have supposed that the cowardly ruffian at the bar would have quailedat such a sight, and felt an overpowering consciousness that his tissue of incoherent lies must be scattered to the winds by her testimony. The simple words—" That is the man !" when she was asked who it was that had fired on her at Stanfield Hall on the night her masters were murdered, should have been enough to convince him that his guilt was discovered, that his fate was sealed. In the history of Criminal Jurisprudence, few scenes have ever occurred more touching and even heart rending, than that presented in the Court during the two mournful days of the examination of the unfortunate Emily Sandford, whom her seducer tortured by cross-examination with the most wanton cruelty., the most heartless ruffianism, exciting alternately the indignation and disgust of every auditor. He did not succeed, however, in shaking her on a single point. Nay, every interrogatory only tended more strongly to illustrate the veracity of her statements, and the general integrity of her character. She appears to be a woman of a somewhat superior order, endowed with a sound understanding, a penetrating judgment, and a strong sense of propriety. She seems, indeed, to have not less commanded the admiration than to have excited the pity of the court, the bar, and the audience; and it now, to her honour, comes clearly out, that the unhappy man was under a promise of marriage to her which he remorselessly broke, and rendered her the victim of a cruelty almost without parallel,but which Providence haspunished by rendering her, in turn, the principal instrument in hig destruction.