The Sun. — 1860-11-03 (London, England)

TRIAL FOR MURDER IN LUBLIN.  A trial for murder, which ended on Wednesday  in a verdict of "Not Guilty," is exciting considerable discussion in Dublin. The Daily Express in giving a resume of the evidence, dwells upon the circumstances that have fastened public attention so strongly on the case : "An aged couple who, as man and wife, had struggled up the hill of life together, and had descended together also towards the valley of the shadow of death, lived in a single room in Ormondstreet, Dublin. They were silk-weavers by trade, and each worked at the loom. The rooms above and below were occupied by other lodgers, and there were breaks in the floor and in the ceiling, which made it possible for those who lodged above and below to hear any unusual noise in the room which was occupied by Gill and his deceased wife. There was but one bed in the room, in which they both slept. They were believed to live on good terms, except when he drank on Friday or Saturday, and then he was ' cross.' On a Sunday morning the lodgers in the room under theirs heard a noise like the dropping of water from the ceiling, and found on examination that it was blood. They raised an alarm among the inmates of the house. Some persons knocked at Gill's door. They entered and found his wife in a sitting posture at the fire, with her throat cut through to the bone, her hands and arms besmeared with blood, while a blunt knife without a handle, lay loosely in her hand. The body when thus discovered by the neighbours was not quite cold, showing that life was not very long extinct. The milkwoman had knocked at the usual hour, and the milk was taken in by the old man, dressed only in his shirt, which was not an unusual circumstance, and therefore excited no attention. But nothing was then said of the death of his wife. If the woman was murdered her husband must have done the deed, as he declared himself that there was no other person in the room. But why should he do it ? What could be his motive ? He had subscribed for years to a burial society, from which he was entitled to £5 or a if his wife died a natural death. But then she earned something by her labour, varying from 12s. to 20s. a-week. Was he likely to deprive himself of that by a foul crime ? The defence was not that some other person had committed the murder, but that there was no murder at all. It was alleged that the unfortunate old woman committed suicide, that she had been for some time unsound in her mind, and that the razors had been put out of her way the day before. The medical testimony was entirely against the idea that tie mortal wound could have been inflicted in such a manner with such an instrument by her own hand. But then the doctors admitted the possibility, and left room for a rational doubt. Besides the nature of the wound, and the instrument found in her hand—not grasped firmly or thrown aside, as might be expected in a case of suicide where such terrible maniac force must have been used—there is the difficulty that the crime of self-destruction could not be effected unknown to Gill, that he did not miss her from the bed, and that when he rose to open the door for the milkwoman he did not notice that she was a corpse, though he must have passed near her, as the bed was but two feet from the fireplace where she sat. Why had she not gone to bed, or, if she had gone to bed, why was she up so early ? Why sitting stiff and motionless, with her head against the fireplace ? These are questions which might naturally have been asked, even by a ' cross' husband, especially if he thought that the poor old woman was deranged, and needed to be guarded against self-destruction. The jury found that all these facts were consistent with the innocence of the prisoner. Still we cannot but feel that it would have been more satisfactory if the coroner's inquest and the inquiries of the police, and the evidence produced by the Crown, had thrown more light upon the whole case, and rendered it certain that the deceased had died by her own hand. The public are unfortunately left under the painful impression, from the possibilities .of this case, that a murder may be committed where two persons are living together in a room to which no one else has access, and that the guilty party may escape with impunity. We do not quarrel with the verdict in this case. We grant that it was strictly according to the evidence, and we are obliged to assume that the evidence was the best that could be produced. We must regard the accused as an innocent man, for a jury of his countrymen have not found him guilty. -We treat the question merely as one of the most perplexing of judicial puzzles."