The Sun. — 1862-03-12 (London, England)

MURDER MT ESSEX.  A most extraordinary and sudden affair took place at Dunmow late on Saturday evening ; and, as an instance of the cowardly effect of the concealed knife, and its dreadful consequences, has (says the Essex Herald) seldom been paralleled in this county. About 11 o'clock a few wrangling words in rather a high tone were heard coming from near the gaslamp, opposite the doctor's pond, and when two or three young men went to the spot, they found that a man was standing there who had just been wounded in some way with a sharp instrument, and 1 at that moment two men were escaping across the Downs as fast as they could; unfortunately the persons alarmed were so occupied with their attention to the sufferer that the offenders made their escape. The person thus desperately assaulted walked only a few yards across the road before he fell, and being taken into the Star yard, died almost directly. It was soon found that the deceased is named James Barnard, from Cophill, near Shefford, in Bedfordshire—a young married man, about 27 years of age, who travelled the country as a hawker of umbrellas, braces, clothes' lines, &c. From what can be learnt at present, it appears that he had been i out on his calling, and was going home to his lodgings at the Bell, at Church-end, where his wife was ; no one seems to know whether he had had any quarrel worth naming with arty one; and he is said, by parties who knew him, to have been a quiet inoffensive person, and therefore the fear is that the dreadful deed was done in a moment of malice and spite, but by whom is at present involved in mystery, which the police are sedulously endeavouring to unravel. A correspondent writing (Monday morning, ten o'clock) says :—When I wrote to you last night the police were scouring the neighbourhood, and had been hither and thither but without success ; however, early in the evening Superintendent Rogerson obtained a clue, and forthwith, finding a Dunmow man, named John Button—who was said to be one of the two seen to hasten across the Downs just before Barnard fell—he (Button) voluntarily confessed that he was present whca the assault took place, although he did not touch the deceased, and that a man named Henry Eagle, of Little Easton, was the person who had blows with the deceased, and must have been the perpetrator of the dreadful deed. Button further willingly and earnestly detailed the conversation he had with Eagle as the,y were going home. The superintendent immediately took two constables with him (knowing that the accused, from previous circumstances, was a most desperate fellow), and succeeded in finding him at the dwelling of a relative. While the superintendent and police-constable Day went in at the front door, the accused attempted to escape from the back; but police-constable Johnson was ready for him, and after some resistance he was secured, and immediately brought to the Dunmow police station. This dreadful case has caused much more consternation at Dunmow than any occurrence of the kind for many years, and although it was Sunday evening a great concourse thronged the sides of the cart when Eagle was brought into the town. The prisoner has been quiet in the cell ,a all inight, but he is watched most narrowly, and police-constable sat up with him for that purpose.