The Sun. — 1846-10-26 (London, England)

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF  MURDFIZ AND SUICIDE.  On Wednesday, the 30th day of September last, George Heal, y, of Great Gonerby, in th.o county of Lincoln, labourer, brought to his father's house, at that place, a girl named Mary Hill, aged about nineteen, who stayed with him there till Thursday, the Bth instant, and on that day, during his absence, she left the house. On finding that to be the case, he left home the same evening, saying he should be back in an hour and a half, but never returned. On the following Tuesday morning, the 13th instant, information was given to the police at Sleaford, about fourteen miles from Great Gonerby, that a man had poisoned himself at a beer-shop there called the Plough, and an inquest was held on the body on the following day by Mr. George Kewney, one of the coroners for Lincolnshire, when the deceased was identified as the George Healey before named ; and from the evidence it appeared that he had come to the Plough on Sunday evening very wet and without a hat, and said that his hat had blown off in Belton fish-pond, which is twelve miles from Sleaford, and he had fallen into the water in trying to get it out. He stayed at the Plough, and on Monday was a good deal in bed, hut came down occasionally ; and at various times of the day employed different little boys to fetch him two pennyworths of laudanum, which he put into a sodawater bottle which he had borrowed, saying he was going to take physic. In the evening of Monday he was sitting with the company in the house, drinking and amusing himself, when three boatmen came in, and one of them said to one of the company, " That's the fellow we pulled out of the river last night ;" on hearing which he withdrew from the room and went to bed, and in the morning was discovered dead, and the sodawater bottle under the mattress with the remains of the laudanum In it, and a small phial which he had sent for the poison, to disarm suspicion, in his pocket. After hearing the evidence, the jury returned a verdict of felo de se; and the Coroner directed the police to look out after the girl, as the man was a very bad character, and she had not been heard of since she had left her father's house. On Thursday, the 15th instant, the body of a woman was discovered in the river Witham, in the lordship of. Harroby, close to Grantham, and immediately adjoining the garden of Mr. Kewney, the coroner, fourteen miles from Sleaford, which. turned out to be the body of the woman in question, and had evidently been in the water some days ; and an inquest was held before the same coroner on Friday, the 16th instant, when the most remarkable circumstances were brought to light. It appeared that after Healey left bis father's house he went to Lincoln in search of the girl, and not finding her there he returned on Friday to Fulbeck, about 11 miles from Grantham, where he discovered she was with an aunt. He then went to the constable's house, and in his absence borrowed the constable's staff and handcuffs, stating he was the constable of Great Gonerby (which was totally false), and was going to take a woman into custody for stealing silver spoons and sugar-bowls, at Great Gonerby. He then charged two respectable persons in the village to assist him in the Queen's name, saying he expected resistance, and went to the house where the girl was, where by main force he took her into custody on this pretended charge, and conveyed her in the Lincoln carrier's waggon to Grantham, where he took her to a respectable public house, the Blue Man, gave her supper, and had her Hocked up all night, stating he should take her before the magistrates in the morning. Accordingly, in the morning of Saturday, the 17th, at nine o'clock, he requested the landlord to take care of the handcuffs and staff till his return, and left the house with the girl, saying he was going to Mr. Mariner's, the clerk to the magistrates. Instead of this, which of course he never intended, he called at the Blue Pig, another public-house in Grantham, where Mr. Morris, the constable of Fulbeck, puts up, and left word that Mr. Morris would find the staff and handcuffs at the Blue Man, where he had left them for him, and thence he and the woman were traced to the field through which the river Witham runs, where the body of the girl was found, and where they w,re seen to take the river side instead of the footpath ; and at 10 o'clock Mr. Botherway, the occupier of such field, picked up out of the river, within 10 yards of the spot where the body was found, a hat with a glove and handkerchief in it, which, on the inquest on the woman, was identified as belonging to Healey ; and between 10 and 11 o'clock on the same day Healey was met by a person who knew him, on an unfrequented road, in the direction of Sleaford, without a hat and wet up to the waist, and he said, on being asked the reason of being without a hat, that it had blown off in Belton fish-pond (through which he had passed in his road from the field before mentioned), and he had tumbled in in trying to get it out. On the same day, Saturday, he sold his coat at Sleaford, and in the pocket was the fellow glove (quite wet) to the one found in the hat taken out of the river by Mr. Botherway. Under all these circumstances there can be no doubt that Healey had murdered the woman by drowning her; but, as he had anticipated justice by committing suicide, and as there was no direct evidence of the manner in which the girl got into the water, the jury returned a verdict of "Found drowned." What makes the case more remarkable is the fact, that it was in open day that the deed was done, and within ten yards of a hovel in which Mr. Botherway and some of his men must have been within a quarter of an hour of the girl being drowned, which hovel is close to the river's edge. From the circumstance of Healey having appeared wet on the Sunday evening, it is conjectured that he contemplated suicide by drowning, but was prevented by tLe boatmen.  •