The Sun. — 1830-02-18 (London, England)

THE HADDINGTON MURDERS.  We have learned from undoubted authority the mode in which Emend describes himself to have committed the murders. Imaeining that a haberdasher of the Southside, called Mr. G., and Mrs. Franks, had occasioned all the bickering. and heartburning betwixt him and his wife, he conceived the most deadly resentment against both, particularly against Mrs. Franks, whom he seems to have regarded as the chief enemy of his domestic peace. Under the influence of this feeling, he began to medite evil against his sister-in-law; and so fully possessed was he with this fell purpose, that some time before the murder was committed, he says he would have " taken his revenge had she (Mrs. Franks) been a man." But "he bore _himself down," to use his own language, and the mortal purpose passed away. On the Sunday, however, after the quarrel with Mrs. Emond, Ind his attempt to throw her bodily into the well, when he came to reflect on his conduct, he was stricken with remorse for his usage of his wife, and he determined to be revenged on the person whom, right or wrong, he believed to be the principal, if not the sole cause of his domestic disquietude. Accordingly, on the Sunday evening he left his room by the window as described in the evidence, and set out for Abbey, with a predetermined purpose to murder Mrs. Franis. When he reached the cottage he knocked at the garden-door, at the same time announcing himself; and Mrs. Franks,knowing his voice, after a short while admitted him. Then Emend contrived' to lead her into conversation, and having thus thrown her off her guard, he struck her a violent blow with a bludgeon, which,however, had not the effect of stunning or depriving her of her senses; for, strong from terror and the love of life, she ran out of the house and fled towards the garden-door, pursued by Emond. • lie overtook her near the pig-sty, seized hold of her, cut her throat with his pen-knife, and then threw her into the pigsty. He next bethought himself that Magdalene Franks was still alive, and might _bear witness against him; so, having despatched her mother, he instantly returned to the house and beat in the brains of the daughter with some heavy instrument which he calls a bludgeon, but which, from the nature of the wounds inflicted, must have had sharp angles. He had no sooner done so, however, than he was struck with remorse, and in order to conceal from his view the shattered head of his innocent victim, he covered it up hastily with the carpet. And having thus murdered Magdalene Franks, he took a table-knife, daubed it with blood, stuck on it some grey hairs, torn from the head of Mrs. Franks, in order to create a believe that the murders had been perpetrated by this instrument, and then threw it carelessly down. The pen-knife with which he cut the throat of Mr.. Franks was taken from him by Mr. Lloyd, superintendent of police for the county of Haddington ; and he has been heard to remark, that " Lloyd little kens what the whittle did which he carries in his pocket." He appears to have no remorse whatever for the murder of Mrs. Franks, whose life he seems to have conceived himself entitled to take, in order to satiate his vengeance; but whenever the name of Magdalene is mentioned, or the idea of her shoots across his mind, he is immediately seized with the most dreadful fits of despair, and exclaims—" The innocent blood calls for vengeance 1" The miserable wretch has not yet explained in what way he left the premises after the murders were committed ; but it is manifest that the breaking of the panes in the two windows of the lumber-room, the upsetting of the flower-pots, and the overturning of various other articles, must have been done for the same reason that he dabbled the table-knife with clotted blood and hair—namely, to create an erroneous impression as to the real mode in which the murders were committed. It was his intention to have been back to Berwick before daylight; but the precautions which he judged necessary for his safety delayed him too long. Never, in short, was a great crime perpetrated with mere des• perate barbarity, or with a greater degree of caution and foresight in the view of preventing a disclosure. —Glasgow Herald.