The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser. — 1854-04-04 (Liverpool, Merseyside, England)

MURDER AND SUICIDE.—On Wednesday a painful sensation was created throughout the Regent's Park district of St. Pancras by the discovery of a shocking murder and suicide, at 47, Clarence-gardens. The house was tenanted by James Martin, a shoemaker, about 57 years of age, who, with his wife, occupied the parlours, letting the remainder out in lodgings, one of the upper rooms to his married daughter and her husband. Shortly after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning Mrs. Whybrow, Martin's daughter, came down stairs, and not finding either her father or mother up as usual, knocked several times at the front parlour door, ocupied as their bedroom, but receiving no answer, she effected an entrance, and then discovered the place deluged with blood, and the lifeless bodies of her parents lying across each other on the bed with their throats cut in a shocking manner. Her screams immediately brought the other lodgers and neighbours to her assistance, and it was then discovered that the. murderer and his victim were quite dead and cold. A shoemaker's knife, covered with blood, was found on the bed near the right hand of the former. Both Martin and his wife were in their ordinary night-dress. On searching the room a letter, now in the possession of the police, was found, and identified by the daughter as being in the handwriting of Martin, stating the circumstances which had led him to the commission of so horrible a crime. From this it would appear that Martin was in very embarrassed circumstances, and that he had promised to pay his landlord half a year's rent, which was due to him that day, but was unable to do so. He (Martin) was under an impression that his goods would be seized, and that he and his wife would have to go to the workhouse, to prevent which he resorted to this terrible alternative.  THE NEW ACT ON THE COASTING TRADE, which has just received the royal assent on Thursday, repeals the 152 d and 191st sections of the 16th and 17th of Victoria, c. 107, and enables the Queen to exercise retaliatory powers, as in the 324th and two following sections of the same act. This act destroys "the last rag of protection," as stated, providing by the 2d clause that every foreign ship which, after the passing of the act, is employed in carrying goods or passengers coastwise from one part of the United Kingdom to another, or from the Channel Islands to the United Kingdom, or from the United Kingdom to any of the said islands, or from any of them to any other of them, or from any part to any other part, " shall be subject, as to stores for the use of the crew, and in all other respects, to the same laws, rules, and regulations to which British ships when so employed are now subject." Further, by the 3d section it is enacted, that foreign ships employed in the coasting trade shall not be subject to higher rates than British ships, and with respect to passengers it is stated to be expedient to provide for the safety of passenger steamers ; and it is enacted by the concluding provision that every foreign steam vessel carrying passengers from one place to another on the coast of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Channel Islands shall be subject to the provisions of the Steam Navigation Act, 1851. The coasting trade is now thrown open to foreign vessels in the same manner as to British ships.