The Warwickshire Herald. — 1886-08-26 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

NVO:11:111... hll-1,;11Iti Snit I --ha hut- 1.1 wildly for two or threr dtly- !'otor.. • and lind an idea that tlw .tt:tt• 1 to --;tarale her from liliti V.llllO ocittiomthai he t-hotill not at :ttt. time 11:11, ,tlrpt-isett at her actim.t.. on in in -tate imp:o. -.•. I.ttt,':itr, at the ea-e hi the of th,•:,..t fart- i• ,iltear- plain tutu t the pri-onet. at tit.. Ilium 1: • r.rmnitted the t, (1,1 could not tr.\ r l• ; •• 01ett0t..4.. th,• t•oat na a• ' 1,.. rrcpzir...l that the aeett,..:l -hottl.l ' 11.11 onlllo pilol C11:1! tintot. eN idener and e-tni. pri-oner to gaol to await her trial N..- •:.r:r tlmoturli ; hut it AN ould have Iteon more r.,tional hail -lir locuit convoyol Will eventually he platted. l'lto ett,o i: it t-ad one iii t•very re:tteet. It is sad to see anyone arraigned as a murderer, hut doubly sad when that one is a woman. The catuke of the womtin's melancholia and madness seems clearly to have been the (teentuplation of family care, solicitude for the welfare  of her children, intensified by the difficulty she and her husband felt in providing for all of them at length becoming so keen and poignant as to upset her reason and make her the murderess of those for whom her very love had driven her mad.  SUICIDE is a sad and terrible thing, even when the self-murderer is one who have lived long enough to put life fairly to the test, and to decide whether it is really worth living. The suicide of the Birmingham telegraph boy, Fred. Bradshaw, is more sad than even suicides generally are. He was only sixteen years of age, and his life does not seem to have been more crust in its associations than is the life of average humanity. Beyond that he displayed a great fondness for music—generally an indication of a high-strung and nervous temperament—he seems to have been mots .ana in every respect. But the times were out of joint with him. He had been in the telegraph office for about three years, and recently a reduction in pay brought down his wages to the extent of about Is. per week. Yet this does not give a good and sufficient reason for his fatal act. The buoyant spirit of boyhood can generally dismiss such annoyances with a two or three hours' sulky :grumbling. tut Fred. Bradshaw bought a pistol, got up at five o'clock on Saturday morning, and blew his brains out. The fact that he carried the loaded weapon about with him all day makes the suicide seem singularly determined—for there can be little doubt that it was a suicide. A romantic fancy often seizes upon a boy; but seldom indeed does it incite him to self-destruction. It is a melancholy and touching spectacle to see a boy, who should of all others be most full of the hopefulness of human nature sinking with despair to the low ebb at which alone suicide seems possible. We prefer to think that poor Fred. Bradshaw was not driven to self-slaughter by a thoughtful' weariness of life.  "The insane root That takes the reason prisoner"  must have been in him as in ninety-nine eases out of every hundred it is ia the unhappy suicide. A philosophical resolve to flee from all the ills that flesh is heir to is more than we can realise in a youth of 16.  TALK about "bearding the lion in its den," the girl Florence Taylor, fourteen years of age, who was brought before the magistrates at Moor-street on Friday and Saturday last performed a similar feat with a vengeance, the only difference being that instead of a lion it was a Birmingham detective who was "bearded." It will be remembered that on Thursday last Detective Bennett left his house at Small Heath in charge of Taylor, and when he returned home in the evening she informed him that a wood-hawker, named Hubbard, had "sneaked into the house and stolen some coins from a money-box." Her description of the man was so minute, and she spoke with so much circumstantiality as to his movements, his mode of ingress and egress—not to mention her own terror—that Bennett, astute as even he is supposed to be, was led into a trap, and apprehended the supposed thief. When the man was before the Court the girl repeated her statement with, if possible, more minuteness of detail, and had it not been for Mr. Hill, the Deputy-Stipendiary, recalling the girl and further questioning her as to the man's identity, it would, doubtless, have gone hard with Hubbard, and at the present time it is more than likely he would be in gaol. Taylor subsequently admitted that she was the thief, and that the story she had concocted was to hide her own crime. This story furnishes a singular combination of grotesque and grave revelations. In the first place, the idea of a detective's house being broken into in a barefaced fashion is not a little ludicrous. Then the fact that the detective, acting on the false statement of his servant girl, arrested an innocent man, is another feature that has its serious as well as its ludicrous side. But perhaps the most serious aspect of the case in the eyes of the general public will be the serious risks which we all run of being called upon to suffer punishment for somebody else's crime. The sequel, that the servant girl was the thief after all, supplies about the most remarkable illustration of juvenile depravity that has been beard of for some time. It remains to be seen whether a period of imprisonment and reformatory treatment willeffect a reformation in the girls character.