The Sun. — 1864-06-28 (London, England)

THAMES.  GROSS OUTRAGE—Mathew Campbell, a ballast getter, in the employ of the Trinity House Corporation, was brought before Mr Partridge, charged with assaulting Mrs Underwood, the landlady of the White Bear public-house, Hatcliff. cross.  The prisoner, a rough blackguard, had been in the oraotics of going into the White Bear, making disturbances there, and drinking beer which he did not pay for. On Saturday week the prisoner and another man succeeded in passing a counterfeit half crown on Mrs Underwood. Yesterday evening the prisoner and another man entered the White Bear and called for a pot of porter. The prisoner's companion put down a shilling and took it up again. The beer was drunk by the two fellows and not paid for. The prisoner made a disturbance and grossly insulted Mrs Underwood. He then had the impudence to go behind the counter and draw some beer from the engine into a pewter pot, and on Mrs Underwood remonstrating with him he threw the beer he had drawn over her and ran out of the house. A policeman was called, and he soon found the prisoner.  Mr Partridge said the prisoner had committed a gross and oowardly outrage on a respectable woman, and fined him 40s.  The penalty was paid,  Extraordinary Suicide Mania in Cheltenham,  The extraordinary mania for committing suicide, which has prevailed in Cheltenham for some weeks was last illustrated o❑ Thursday by a young man named Charles Taylor, 19 years of age, on whose body an inquest was held on Saturday. From the evidence it appears that on the former day he called several times at the residence of a young woman named Elizabeth Hobbs, to whom ho had for some years been paying his addresses, and seemed annoyed to find she was at the Circus with some friends. He called again in the evening, rather the worse for liquor, and found her in; but he con ducted himself in such a rough manner that she had to request him to leave, which he refused to do. Subsequently, while she was in the act of drinking some water, he tipped up the glass, and spilled the water over her, which so enraged her that she threw the residue over him, and slapped his face. After a time he went into the backyard, and as he did not return she went in search of him, and found him in a sitting position on the ground, his neck resting on a cord clothes line which hung across the yard. She lifted the cord from under his chin, and with the other hand raised hie head, and placed him backwards upon a box close by. She spoke to him, but he made no answer. His eyes rolled about for a moment, and then all appeared over. It was conjectured that he might have fallen with his neck on the line while in a fit, or in consequence of being intoxicated, and  thus been suffocated; but the medical testimony showed that it was quite possib:e for him to have designedly deprived himself of life by pressing his neck on the line, and taking this in connection with several threats he had uttered during the evening, the coroner summed up in favour of fel° de se. The jury, however, returned a verdict of'' Suicide while in a state of temporary insanity.' While the jury were deliberating some consternation was caused by a report that a young man named Elliott, a companion of the deceased, had stabbed himself in the breast, and was dying. On this coming to the coroner's ears in the jury room he remarked, "I shall not be surprised if half Cheltenham commits suicide, particularly while juries returns verdicts which the evidence does not support." It is right, however, to state that Elliott was seized with a fit, and that a wound on his breast, which he strenuously refuses to account for, had been opened in the fall. The whole affair has produced considerable consternation in Cheltenham, this being the eighth case of suicide which has occurred there within the past seven weeks.