npedrazzini/19thc_murder_suicide_news huggingface dataset:
The Sun. — 1870-08-23 (London, England)

EMPEROR NAPOLEON 111. Whatever might be said as to the other rumours, there was no room left for doubt as to the authenticity of those statements ! The EMPEROR was suffering from febrile monomania the fits coming upon him in paroxysms. His MAJESTY, we were next informed, in one of these outbursts of delirium, at Rheims, had destroyed himself. Finally, being conveniently brought to life again for the purpose, the EMPEROR, it was announced, in a sensational placard of the Observer of Sunday last, had taken his flight from France! And, on looking to the Observer, we there learnt that it was currently reported that he was momentarily expected to arrive at Dover. The telegrams received yesterday morning, direct from Chalons, informing us, on the contrary, that instead of being delirious, instead of having committed suicide, instead of taking flight for Dover, the EMPEROR, as calm and impassive as ever, had passed to and fro on horseback through the camp at Chalons, had there reviewed the troops, had there been surrounded by the soldiery clamouring to be led against the Prussian invaders. Yet—having "brought down" these outrageous canards one after another—we may be perfectly sure that others, possibly yet wilder, will be just as strong upon the wing to-morrow and the day afterwards.  AT length the French Ministry, through the official organ of the Government, have uttered the words which might advantageously to the interests of France and of truth, have been spoken two or three days ago. The Journal Official acknowledges the danger of the situation. In a brief note yesterday. morning it says that no news having been received by the Government for two days from the army of the Rhine, in consequence of the interruption of telegraphic communications, it is thought that the plan resolved upon by Marshal BAZAINE has not yet succeeded. In other words the Germans have interposed between the chief French army and the capital, and BAZAINE, shut up in a fortress which contains no sufficient supply of food, must cut his way through the German hosts or surrender. That this was the state of affairs, was apparent from the first. Without the aid of the German accounts, BAZAINE'S own telegram was quite enough. He had announced his intention to retreat. He commenced to retreat on Sunday. For a week he has been fighting continual battles without claiming to have made any progress with that retreat which was openly proclaimed to be the best resource for the French arms. The Germans have attempted to stop him. They have succeeded. Under the circumstances it becomes of less moment to inquire into the
The Sun. — 1870-04-20 (London, England)

FRIENDS.  Even poor Mr. Murphy must have felt the truth of this adage, when he learnt what his friend Mr. Steel said in addressing a Greenwich mob. The lecture hall in that town had been taken, and the money paid for it, but when one of the trustees found that a disturbance was imminent, he offered to return , rcmh:td -fa tio pse sf  the room. At the hour appointed for the lecture, a mob assembled ; but the superintendent of the police, with his men, refused any admittance to the hall. A. deputation was then formed to wait on the trustee who had offered to return the cheque; but soon after a Mr. Steel said that that gentleman could not be seen, and that as 400 policemen and 90 soldiers lined the hall, Murphy would not attend. "He regretted that the police had been called upon to act in such a way as to prevent any of her Majesty's subjects addressing their friends. He thought it was a great mistake, and a course of action which seriously affected the liberties of the subject." Was Mr. Steel joking or in earnest? Surely if we feel bound to prevent, even say the commission of suicide, we are also morally bound to prevent an imminent disturbance in which without doubt blood would have been shed. Would Mr. Steel have been better satisfied if the authorities had stood on one side and allowed Mr. Murphy to attempt to lecture and have permitted the fight that would almost to a certainty have ensued ? Mr. Murphy has been very glad on previous occasions to obtain the protection of the police.  THE LATEST EDITION of " THE SUN " R ipplicd, uR sot n as published, Every Evening, by W. At, EX-A. DEB (late Brooks), Newspaper Agent, o. 4, Old Cavendish street, Oxford-street
The Sun. — 1870-05-21 (London, England)

THE NICE ROMANCE.  Some few details have been given of a remarkable double suicide which has just been committed at Nice. Further particulars are to hand of the singular story. On Sunday morning last some peasants found, in the grounds of the Villa Teissere, in the Valley of Montegat, near Nice, a young woman bleeding and insensible. She was removed to the town, but expired before reaching it. From her statements and other information it appear that she was the daughter of a bookseller, and herself a brilliant pianiste, who during the winter menthe resided at Nice. Sheethere made the acquaintance of a man named Morplain, and a close intimacy was formed bet Ween them, the man being 34 and the young woman 30 years of age. The latter, Mdlle. de Hauterine, became apprehensive that her fatherwould discontinue the allowance he had been accustomed to make, and Morplain being without resources, they determined to put an end to their anxieties by terminating their existence. According to the statement of the dying woman she left Nice with her 'companion. "It was," said she, " our last night. We took with us a phial of laudanum, a revolver, and a swordstick. We chose this as the best spot for our purpose. We made a bed with our outer garments, laid upon the moss. We slept till daybreak. We had prepared everything, and at 7 o'clock came the adieu. I had taken off my white petticoat, which Morplain hung upon the branches of a tree. We drank the laudanum. We suffered much but we could not die. Morplain said to me I can bear this no 1 onger ; I shall blow out my brains.' I cried out that I would not be left alone with his corpse, and I said, 'Shoot me here,' pointing to the spot where a gaping wound in her breast was visible. I did not wish to be disfigured, and I entreated him to aim there. He fired point blank. The correspondent of the Gaulois adds that the statement is verified by the facts of the chemise beine burnt, and the skin blackened by the powder. " Morplain," added the dying woman, " shot himself through the head, and you will find him lying yonder. He feared a failure, and you will see that he yet holds his poiguarcl in his hand. I did not feel much hurt at first, and I managed to walk hither, leaning upon the case of the sword stick." The body of the man was discovered in the position his unhappy. companion had described, and was removed to Nice, where a judicial inquiry was opened.
The Sun. — 1870-11-12 (London, England)

THE LEVEE EN MASSE.  The Tours correspondent of the Standard, in a letter of the 9th instant, says :—A decree yesterday divides the levee en masse into four bans, which will be called out as required. The first ban is the single men between 21 and 40. These are called out by the decree of Sep tember 29, but, like many decrees, that has been a mere dead letter, and the men are for the most part still in their homes. Does not this shew the utter folly of issuing decree after decree without taking the slightest care to see that they are carried out ? The second ban takes in all married men up to 30, the third from 30 to 35, the fourth from 35 to 40. No hint is given of the dates at which these various bans will be called out, but the general opinion is that, with the exception of the first, they will never be summoned at all. It would, indeed, cause far less distress and inconvenience to summon at once the conscripts of '7l and '72, This would give 600,000 young fellows, even allowing for the provinces occupied by the Prussians. These lads would learn the use of arms and the necessary drill far more speedily than the older men, besides which a large number of the married men are at present enrolled in the National Guard, and can be utilised for the defence of their respective districts. It need scarcely be said that the entire absence of hands for agricultural manufacturing, and other purposes, by .the absence from home of all men, single or married, between 21 and 40, would be enormous, and that the number of women and children who would be at once thrown upon the State for support would be overwhelming. It is in fact this very circumstance that the family bread winners are still at home that enables France to support war with less suffering, except in the invaded districts, than is experienced in Germany. By alI means make every married man a National Guard, drill him and discipline him to the utmost, and bring him into the field for local defence ; but to take him away from his field or his workshop until the very latest moment would be simply an act of suicide for France, and such, I need hardly say, it is generally considered to be here. Ido not suppose, however, that M. Gambetta ever gave the matter a thought when he dashed off his first decree, ordering a general levee en masse.
The Sun. — 1870-10-19 (London, England)

DELESVAUX. It was not necessary for the offence  to be proved; it was not necessary for it to have been committed. It was enough that the defendant should be accused ; he was sure to be convicted by this official. How was it that he was always to obliging ? His salary was miserably small, scarely enough to pay for the glasses of beer that he used to quaff in the boulevard estaminets. It now turns out that he was paid by the job, and that the job did not consist in trying, but in convicting a prisoner. Mora than  that; his reward was in proportion to the amount of the punishment inflicted; the fine, or a portion of it, which he imposed went into his own pocket. Thus he bad a direct personal incentive not only to convict but to punish severely. If he were ever inclined to clemency the thought that his pocket would suffer checked all sach weakness. There was no need for the EMPEROR to refuse to relax the Press Law when he had such a tool as DELESVAUX to enforce it. It might pacify the Liberals to make concessions to the journalists in theory ; but NAPOLEON could be sure that DELESVAUX would nullify all such concessions in fact. The conspiracy has now been brought to light. One conspirator still lives in royal state at Wilhelmshohe, fbr the author of the coup d'etat was not likely to feel compunction at this late period of his career. The other conspirator, shut up in Paris, unable to escape from the scorn and the vengeance. of the men whom he had wronged, has found life intoler able, and has sought refuge from shame in death. It is not the first suicide to which the events of the past three, months have given rise. The two first victims of the war into which M. OLLIVIER entered with a light heart fell beneath their own hand near Norwich and at Washington. The English banker who found himself ruined by the financial panic which the war induced, the French ambassador, whom the fierce summer heat and political disappointment at the collapse of Liberal institutions in France, drove to despair, deserve our pity. For this corrupt judge DELESVAUX we cannot feel any such emotion. For him and for the master who could make use of such as him we can find only contempt. Western Morning News.
The Sun. — 1870-10-13 (London, England)

LAW AND POLIOE.  ASSAULTING A SWEETHEART.—EIam Allan, a young man, was brought, before the Marlborough-street Policecourt, charged with assaulting a young woman named Rose Stevens, residing in Church-street, Soho. From the evidence of the complainant, who had a bruised forehead, it appeared that while she was standing at the corner of Windmill-street, the prisoner with whom she had " kept company" walked up to her and gave her a severe blow on the back of her neck, knocking her down, and he then kicked her without saying anything to her.—Committed for two months', with hard labour. AN UNGRATEFUL GlRL.—Jenny Taylor, described as a laundress, of 154, Walton-street, Chelsea, was charged, at :Westminster Police-court, with being drunk and in• capy?le of taking care of herself. The offence was of a minor character as compared with that with which the litiSoner was charged before at this Court on the 30th of June last. She was leading an immoral life at Clarendonstreet, Pimlico, and made a desperate attempt to commit suicide by throwing herself out of a window ; the case was fully proved, but in consideration of her youth and supposed penitence, together with an expressed wish to be sent to her home, at I'embridge, near Hereford, Mr. presiding magistrate, directed Inspector Arnold,o see her safe to her home ; she was accordinglyz Humphreys the sent to a respectable coffee-house for the night, and then sent down to her home. She did not go there. Mr. Arnold issued his warrant on the 28th of July for the original offence. It appears, however, that she after wards went home ; but last night she was found drunk and incapable by Walter Barrett, a police-constable, at Victoria station, one of her old haunts. Mr. Humphreys said there was a married man with a family in the background. Mr. Woolrych said ho must be a great miscreant. It was a melancholy case, but the warrant must fall to the ground. He, however, could now only fine her ss. Thomas Tanner, 23, and George Payne, 35, were then charged with attempting to rob the last prisoner of her shawl at Victoria Station. They were remanded for a week.
The Sun. — 1870-06-27 (London, England)

ATTEMPTED MURDER AND SUICIDE. On Saturday afternoon an extraordinary attempt at murder, followed by an attempted suicide, was made by a man named Jermyn, employed to carry coals and do other odd jobs at the Great Seal Patent Office, Southamptonbuildings, Chancery-lane. Mr. Tomlinson, a clerk at the Patent Office, was taking his lunch in his room, when he received a severe blow upon the head, and on turning round saw Jermyn, who had just previously fetched the luncheon for him, armed with a staff. He immediately closed with him, and received other blows of a serious character. His assailant then escaped by means of the window, and slid down the water-pipe into the yard. He then ran round the premises to a water-closet, where he was discovered bleeding from a sever e wound in the throat, inflicted by a penknife. He was at once removed to King's College Hospital, where he lies in a very precarious state. Mr. Tomlinson 's injuries were attended to without delay, but they were not of such a serious character as might have been anticipated. seeing that the weapon used, an old special constable's staff, was split in two by the force of the blows. No cause whatever has been assigned for the commission of the act, and it is not believed that any animosity existed betwoen Mr. Tomlinsan and Jermyn. it appeaes, however, that Jermyn, some two years ago, received an injury to his head by falling down stairs, and has since been subject to sudden outbursts of iosanity. Jermyn was in 1867 sworn in as a special constable, and he thus obtained the weapon with which he inflicted the injuries upon his victim.  The child of Miss Cowan, one of the infants found in the baby-farm at Brixton, has died. A post-mortem examination will be made. The recent reports received from the principal moors in Scotland are (according to Land and Water) of the most cheering description.
The Sun. — 1870-11-18 (London, England)

FRENCH FASHIONS IN ENGLAND.  A social tragedy, very frequent in Franco, has j ust occurred at Redhill, and it is to be hoped it will not lead to many imitations among half-crazy young people who think suicide romantic. A young man and woman, named Robert Walker and Helen Mason, have destroyed themselves by taking sufficient prussic acid to kill twenty people. Acting with all due precision and forethought, they left a joint note, bearing their signatures, in which they explained that "being tired and weary of life," they had "reasoned the matter over between themselves," and agreed to share the same fate. Having determined on this rational proceeding, the man went to a chemist's shop for two pennyworth of prussic acid to clean gold lace. He was refused under the new Aft of Parliament, which requires a witness. An instance of the extraordinary folly and heedlessness of some persons and of the difficulty of providing practical guarantees by Act of Parliament, was given in the evidence. A man named Crouch was looking in at the window of the chemist, when Walker, whom he had never seen before, came out and asked him to officiate as a witness. He did so, and signed the book. As it happened the shopman knew Crouch, he gave the poison without suspicion, the terms of the Act being complied with. The jury censured Crouch for signing his name without knowing what it was for, and the coroner refused his expenses. The incident, however, should put shopmeu on their guard, and suggests the propriety of asking such witnesses a few questions. The couple who were "weary of life," strange to say,  were sober and peaceable, did not want for money, and bore good characters, having not long left a house in which both had situations. The young woman was only 19, and neither of them appear to have possessed 711C213 sana in corpore sano.
The Sun. — 1870-08-03 (London, England)

COMMERCIAL FRAUDS IN BOMBAY.  The Anglo-Indian commercial world has lately been sorely troubled by the discovery of systematic frauds on a large scale. The burning of the Aurora, in which a firm of brokers, the captain of the vessel, and the carpenter were all implicated being condemned to varying degrees of penal servitude, was but one of a series. The story of the Teresa, of which full accounts are brought by the Bombay papers, is even more painful ,than that of the Aurora, as the young wife - of the captain, who was in delicate health, has died since her husband's arrest on a charge of signing bills of lading and obtaining an advance of £20,000 before shipping the cotton. This dangerous practice has no doubt led to numerous frauds, although in the case in question we must not anticipate the decision of the court. Another tragic story is that of a Parsee merchant and broker of some standing, named Manockjee Kaka, who committed suicide by opium, owing to his having incurred immense liabilities by becoming guarantor for several shipments of cotton before the cotton was bought, and the shippers failing to carry out their engagements. A Hindoo, Cursondass Madhowdass, who has been arrested in connection with the Teresa affair, was formerly in partnership with, this unfortunate man, and was the shipper of the Greyhound, the only vessel mentioned in connection with these transactions. Other inquiries are afloat. Three Bhattias are now in custody at Bombay on a charge of fraud to the extent of £1,380 by shipping rubbish in place of cotton. This plan was also tried, it is said, on board the Teresa, some of the rubbish in the bales actually putrefying and betraying itself to the surveyors. Two native merchants have been charged with obtaining a lakh of rupees on a consignment of opium for which bills of lading were produced which had not really been shipped. Other frauds are spoken of involving ten lakhs of rupees (2100,000,) but it is said the area of these transactions is comparatively limited.
The Sun. — 1870-07-30 (London, England)

SCIENCE, LITERATURE, AND ART.  The Athenceum says :—Last week, at Richmond, Surrey, died Mrs. Ritchie, better known as Anna Cora Mowatt. She was the daughter of an American merchant, and was born at Bordeaux about 1810. Inclination and reduced fortune led her to the stage, and after a successful career in the United States, she made her appearance in London in 1848, at the Princess's Theatre, whence she was drawn to the Olympic by Mr. Watts, the engagement terminating with his financial collapse and suicide in 1850. Mrs. Ritchie was a versatile and prolific writer, and some of her novels attained considerable popularity in America. —Among the names that appear for the first time in the new edition of the "Dictionaire des Conternporains " is that of Mr. Spurgeon ! War, however, is responsible for a large number of the additions. Just as the last edition was full of American generals, the present one is full of Prussian generals ; and besides we have Sir J. Whitworth, Herr Krupp, Herr Dreyse, and M. Chassepot.— The Christian Times has passed into the hands of new proprietors, and will henceforth be published by Mr. Stevenson, Paternoster Row.— The amateurs interested in the Beethoven Festivals which are to be given in Germany may be glad to learn that the war will not prevent the performances from taking place at the various cities recently specified, namely, Vienna, Berlin, and Bonn.— A new drama, entitled " Weeds and Flowers," has been produced at the East London Theatre. There is nothing especially appropriate in the title, the play consisting of a version of an often-used story of a girl taking upon herself the responsibility of an intrigue of her sister's.—M. Victor Hugo has, it is said, finished an historical comedy, entitled " Madame de Maintenon," to be produced at the Franc,ais.—To gratify the warlike instincts of the Parisians, Ponsard's " Lion Amoureux " has been revived at the Thatre Francais. Some passages against the Prussians placed in the mouth of one of the characters were excised at the first production of the piece ; these have now been restored, and it is needless to say are vociferously applauded.  Nature says the heat was so great at Dowlasheram, in the Madras Presidency,in June, that the Indian papers report that many birds died of sunstroke.—The death of Von Graefe, the most distinguished oculist in Europe, is announced. The necessary operations for the construction of the sea wall of the Ist ew Brighton Aquarium are progressing. It is expected that the aquarium will be completed and furnished by the spring of next year.—We have reason to believe that Professor Sir William Thomson will be the next President of the British Association.