The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1882-09-09 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

FRIGH ITUL STORY.  A frightful story comes from the West Coast of Africa. This time it is not the enormities of the King of Dahomey which send a thrill of horror through us. The alleged offenders are the agents and accredited representatives of the Church Missionary Society at Onitsha, on the Niger. Their names are William F. John, Phcebe John, John Williams, and Kezia Williams, and the offence imputed to them irf that they have treated a girl with such sickening brutality as to cause her death. Two girls would seem to have been ill-used, and they had both been ransomed by the accused. The alleged offence took place as far back as 1877, when both girls ran away from their employers, but were brought back, The allegations are not only that the two prisoners brutally f ogged the girls with their own hands, but that a number of natives were also ordered to keep up the punishment, which they did with guava whips, canes, ropes, and other instruments. Not content with this, the male prisoners ordered some pepper to he brought, and rubbed it into the bleeding wounds of the girls as they lay upou the ground helpless and rolling about in agony. This was in the morning, and the girls were left lying on the ground under the broiling sun, without shelter or aid of any kind. At mid-day a number of school boys came up from school and commenced to flcg them again, by order, as is stated, of the prisoners, after which two negroes again rubbed pepper into the wounds. Dul.:lg the whole of the afternoon the two victims, still tied together in the way described, lay in the full glare of the sun, and on one occasion, having succeeded in rolling towards a clump of bushes to seek for shade, it is said the prisoners dragged them back into the sun. In the evening they were untied, and the deceased girl was taken away and lashed to a guava tree in the yard of the prisoner John. She was then in a very weak and prostrate condition, the other girl having, apparently, suffered less severely. Three days after this the deceased was seen in the yard of the prisoner John, lying on the ground, and bleeding from a fresh cut wound on the head, while beside her was:standing Mrs. John, holding a stick about an inch in diameter. The female prisoner said the deceased was s ..ming, and that she had been trying • make her get up, but in vain. Several persons then came up, and it was evident that the deceased was quite unable to raise herself. The next day she died. A large number of witnesses were called at the Police Court, Sierra Leone, on various days between the ind and 7th August, who deposed to the above facts, 'toting that the female prisoners were  looking on and laughing while the pepper was being rubbed into the bleeding flesh of the two girls, and giving other particulars of the outrage, showing cruelty of an atrocious and disgusting nature. The prisoners reserved their defence, end were committed by the magistrates to take their trial at the court of enquiry on the 11th August. Upon that day, the court having assembled, the president delivered a special charge to the grand jury, who, after a deliberation of three hours, presented true bills against all the prisoners on the charge of murder, when the 21st ult. was appointed for the trial to tako place. The agents of our Missionary Societies often blunder, and it is a question whether they do not sometimes, owing to the misdirection of their zeal, do more harm than good. But it is, happily, seldom that such fearful charges as those above described are brought against them.