The Express. — 1864-08-04 (London, England)

JAMES BROWN. Since the discovery of the woman's body there has not been any doubt about the matter ; and as Baow& had previously committed suicide, the jury had little more to do than to verify the known facts. The evidence taken as a whole presents oue of the completeat pictures of what may be called the besotted life ever offered to the public. A dreadful crime has been committed, chiefly because both the murderer and his victim were too muddled and stupified by low and vicious habits to overcome or remove the small difficulties in the way of their living in peace. BROWN, who was 56 years of age, had a wife and child whom he had deserted ; and BISHOP, who was 40 years old, had • husband who before the murder had not seen her for nine years. BROWN was a carpenter, and BISHOP carried on some petty private trade by which she was able to get her own living. How the two came first to live together is not known ; but it appears that having severally forfeited the respect of their friends, they had come to consider themselves thrown by circumstances upon each other. Both were given to habits of intemperance, and were accustomed to vent upon one another the inward gnawing dissatisfaction which always follows self-indulgence. The neighbours say, they were continually gnirrelling. If they had been man and wife the law which bound them together might have borne the blame of their unhappiness ; but a common wretchedness appears to have been the bond of their lives, as it was the cause of their deaths. The woman is said to have been good looking, and BROWN suspected her of maintaining an intimacy with another man. On the morning of Tuesday, July 19, they were seen together by the neighbours in the yard at the beck of the house "on the best of terms." About 1 o'clock of the same day, at which hour they were both in the back kitchen, they bad an altercation, and then a lodger named LOADER, who was in the front kitchen, heard her scream loudly, as if in great agony, and fall heavily on the floor. After that, no one saw her alive, unless this same woman LOADER did. BROWN gave out that Humor, of her own accord, had gone away for good, and related several incidents of her departure—how that she snapped her fingers and made faces at him in the street. At 4 o'clock on the same day he took tea with the lodger in the front kitchen. On Wednesday and Thursday he was at times about the house, and then was absent until Saturday evening. On Sunday be dined with his lodgers, the Losnzaa, and after dinner sat for a time in the summer-house in the back yard. This was the last time he wad seen alive. All this while the murdered body of ROSINA BISHOP was decomposing in the coalhole, and her disappearance was being discussed by the neighbours. From their evidence before the Coroner it is clear that the woman kunst' knew much more of the dreadful affair than she bad been willing to state to the Court. She had told them that after the screams BROWN bad come to her and asked her to fetch some beer ; that she did so, and returning with it saw ROEINA BISHOP bleeding on the ground, and offered to fetch water to wash her face, which Baows refused to permit her to do. She also said that before fetching the beer she said to BROWN, "My GOD, BROViti, are " you murdering the woman f " Another neighbour, a married woman living with her husband, deposed that LOADER had said to her that she was so upset at the eight of the blood that "she was " obliged to have three-ha'porth of gin to settle " her nerven." Mrs. LOADER attempted to deny the accuracy of these reports of her conversations ; but the testimony of several witnesses was opposed to hers, and at last she blamed her excited memory for the defect& of her story. These discrepancies are only of interest as showing the benumbing effects of certain habits of life. BROWN had celebrated the murder by • libation of beer, and here was • woman, who it is evident believed in the murder of her household companion, which, indeed, she had almost seen, and who bad an evident pity for the victim, nevertheless remaining in the house with the murderer, for whom she had no special friendship, talking to him, fetching his beer, taking meals with him, and suppressing the physical homer which she could not help feeling with " three" heporth of gin." But for the hot weather the dreadful facts mieit have been concealed a little longer, but the progress of decomposition forced an inquiry. BRowN's rooms were broken open on the Monday following the murder, and there were found in the parlour his dead body suspended by • cord, and in the coal-cellar that of limits* Butner doubled up and the skull bettered in with his hatchet. The mystery was at an end. We have had murders more exciting from the powerful passion or the deep calculations they revealed, but very few which upon reflection seem sadder, because of its connexion with causes operating, it is to be feared, constantly and on a large scale in the lower strata of society, and tending to destroy all sense of the sacredness of human life.  We rejoice to bear that the Bible Society's agent at Coeetestisople has ieformed the committee that the meet reprieves romeorea there were taken leithoet the knowledge d the Salton, and all is now set right. —Ascent