The Statesman. — 1823-07-14 (London, England)

INQUEST UN ABEL GRIFFITHS.  L From circumstances ilhich have recently come to our knowledge, we are led to think that, had due diligence horn employed in collecting evidence respecting this re volting case, the public would have unanimously acqui eared in the verdict of the Coroner's Jury. On the Jury breaking up, the Coroner, it is stated, gave directions that the pistols, and any other property found on Abel Griffiths, should be taken in charge by the officers, as they became forfeited to the King. In this instance, there was no supineness is the exercise of official function ; and bad the pistols been examined, as carefully as they were assigned, a clue might have been obtained which would have led to the circumstances to which we have referred. The name of the maker was on the pistols. He is a well known and respectable gunsmith in Holborn; and, had lie been examined at the Coroner's Inquest, must have explained the manner in which the perpetrator of the parricide and suicide obtained po ion of the instruments by which the deeds were effected. On the Saturday before the dreadful catastrophe took place, it appears that a gentleman, with whom the grin-smith was acquaint-d, Caine into his shop, accompanied by another whom he did not know, but who, he afterwards learned, was Abel Griffiths. The latter, having assigned some plausible reason for his application, requested his counpaniqn to solicit the loan of a pair of pistols from Mr. P. The request was compli.d wall; a pair of pistols, on the percussion principle, was handed to the applicant; and the .pistois were loaded in the shop. On the Monday; immediately after the gentleman who had accompanied him to the shop 11.,d learned the deadly use to which they had been applied, he hastened breathless to the gun-smith, and communicated the horrid tidings. These par its, paralysed, we may suppose, by the thought of having unwittingly contributed to the complicated catastrophe, did not, like other acquaintance of the deceased, press voluntarily forward with their evidence at the Inquest; but, had the marks on the pistols been noticed, so as to have led the Coroner to have summoned the maker, the Jury would not only have learnt the important fart, that Abel Graliths had with deliberation and address, borrowed and loaded the deadly weapons, two days be.' fore the accomplishment of his purpose, but have also ascertained his appearance and mariner at the moment he obtarried possession of the means of effecting his object. Other witnesses, intimate friends of Abel Griffiths, had, in consequence of the adjournment of the Inquest an opportunity of attending; and they, it would seem, attended spontaneously. They, however, came forward to testify, tinily, respecting the irritability of his mind, for some line previous to the perpetration of the deadly deeds ; and though one of them was asked whether he had kept pistols, the Coroner and Jury were satisfied on hearing that the witness could not say whether lie kept nistols, or how he came by them. It is strange that when a question was asked about the pistols, the weapons themselves were not examined and the clue,adierted to,pursued; but the enquiry, it appears, was no sooner started than relinquished. These pistols, if the statement referred to above be correct, were ordered to be taken in charge by the officers, as having become forfeited to the King. This order must have been pronounced on the assumption that they were the property of Abel Griffiths: hut if proved to bate been lent, and to have been, bona fide, the property of the maker, ought they not to be returned to him ?  A few days since, as Lord Glastonbury's gamekeeper, at Hotley, was going his minis, about three o'clock in the morning, he met a poacher, whom, having repeatedly cautioned before, be endeavoured to seize; the fellow, however, got away, and when a few yards distant, fired at the keeper, and wounded him in the side. The keeper, notwithstanding, again attempted to secure the man, but he escaped behind a hedge, when,re-loading his gun with a broken flint and the beau top of his ramrod, lie again discharged it at his assailant, and wounded him in the face. We understand the keeper has lost one eye, and now lies in a very precarious state. The poacber was taken at Hallatrow.  A man of the name of Benjamin Adams, employed as an iron•boiler maker in .n extensive manufacturing establishment near West Bromwich, was on Saturday se'nnight charged before the Rev. David Lewis, at Oldbury, with soliciting another workman, in the same line 01 business, to leave this country and proceed to France, for the purpose of obtaining employment there; and after a full investigation of the case, he was committed to the county gaol to take his trial at the ensuing Stafford As sixes for the offence. 1