The Sun. — 1870-05-23 (London, England)

MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT ROCHDALE.-Mr. Stevens, the chief constable of Rochdale, received information of a daring robbery in the town. A servant girl in the employ of Mr. Wrigley, builder, stated that after Mrs. Wrigley had gone out to take her usual walk, while she was stooping in the kitchen to pick up the brush, two men came behind her and threw over her head a handkerchief, and threatened to murder her with an axe if she gave an alarm. They took her down into the cellar and tied her hands to an iron bar, and cautioned her that if she made a noise they would bury her in the coal. For upwards of an hour she remained in this position. The young woman was found tied up in the cellar, and the cash-box had been taken out of the drawers upstairs, and broken open with an axe, but strange to say the £BO in gold and notes which had been placed in it had not been removed, and nothing has yet been missed from the house.  It is stated that Mr. Gordon Whitbread, of the Chancery Bar, who is at present the principal secretary of the Lord Chancellor will succeed the late Mr. H. R. Bagshawe, Q.C. as Judge of the Clerkenwell County Court. Mr. Whitbread was called to the Bar in 1840. A gentleman named Greg, an exhibitioner of Balliol College, Oxford, attempted suicide by cutting his throat on Port Meadow on Friday. He was taken to the infirmary and lies in a dangerous state. Over study and disappointment are said to be the causes of the act. The Solicitors' Journal states that a peculiar feature in the entertainment at the Inner Temple, was that the whole company after dinner smoked with great solemnity in the withdrawing room, in compliment probably, to the Prince of Wales, as inheriting the harmless penchant of his relative, the late Duke of Sussex.  Intelligence has reached New York from Cuba that General Rodas has issued a proclamation declaring free all slaves of insurgents, as well as' slaves who have served the Spanish troops as guides or voluntarily aided the Government in repressing the rebellion. It is reported that there are only a few scattered bands of insurgents still in arms.  The North British Daily Mail states that the man Chalmers has been fully identified by several witnesses as the person who is believed to have murdered the Braco tollman. Two youthful witnesses from Glasgow were algo confronted with the prisoner, and acknowledged that they had seen no one who was " liker" the man wanted for the Stockwell-street outrage.on a little girl.  A painful sensation has been caused in Bombay by an accident that occurred to a picnic party at Bandora Hill, two or three miles distant. ,An omnibus carrying a number of the party came against the parapet of a deep well and upset, and two ladies (Madame Vmay and her niece, Miss Phillips) were thrown from the top, sheer into the well, and drowned. A number of others were bruised, none seriously. Major-General Gallway Byng Payne, Colonel Commandant of the Royal Marines, died at Torquay on Thursday. He entered the army in 1831, and served in Spain during the Carlist war of 1838-39. During the Russian campaign he commanded a battalion of Marines at the defence of Eupatoria, and the 2nd Battalion of Sir Colin Campbell's (Lord Clyde) Brigade, in camp near Baidor.  The Chair 'of Medicine and Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, vacant by the death of Sir J. Y. Simpson, Bart., is already solicited by numerous candidates. The most favourably spoken of are Dr. James Matthews Duncan, Dr. Alexander Keiller, Dr. Alexander Simpson (a nephew of Si James), now professor of midwifery in Glasgow ; and Dr. J. G. S. Coghill, late of Shanghai, and formerly assistant to the deceased professor.