Year: 1869

The Latest Batch of Murders.


We have been compelled to chronicle within
the four past days an unusual number of mur-
murderous accidents. On Monday we pub
sished an account of shooting affray at Wits
burg, Arkansas, in which two men were
severely but not fatally wounded; Of the
Mcconnell murder trial now in progress
at Jacksonville, Illinois; of the examina-
ton and commitment Of two of the
three Spanish sailors who are charged with
having made, on the 25th ult, a murderous
assault on two men with the same Malay clasp
knife, ten inches long, with which one of these
sailors afterwards tried to stab woman; of
an old and respectable citizen, 80 badly beaten
on last Sunday morning that it is thought he
will not survive his injuries of drunken
brute, who had knocked his wife down senseless,
closed both her eyes with his fists, pulled all
the hair out Of about six inches of her scalp,
kicked her violently about the head and body,
and would doubtless have murdered her,
In the presence Of her three children, had
not an officer arrived in time to prevent it of
the murderous assault with hatchet by
'Scotchman in Brooklyn upon his wife; of
man arrested in Jersey City on the charge Of
trying to kill his wife with a knife; of man
found lying insensible In a pool of blood on
Saturday night, after having been attacked and
numerically beaten by two unknown assailants;
of boy, FIVE years old, run over and mortally
injured, on the Eighth avenue, by reckless
Jehu, and Of girl six years old, run over
and killed by Brooklyn car. On Tuesday we
had to add to this black list the execution of
negro murderer in Virginia; the murder of a
husband in Illinois by his wife, who shot him
dead as he stood at her bedside with babe
IN bis arms; the beating of man over the
head with an iron bar in Cherry street; a
pitched battle in East Thirty ninth street, in
which brother was struck with an axe and
his sister with knife in the hands of an infu-
rated combatant and the unintentional killing
of young German fisherman by night
watchman.


On Wednesday the murderous catalogue
was continued by the shooting and killing of
man in Ohio by neighbor, of whose wife the
former had spoken disrespectfully additional
facts as to the shooting of the young German
who was fishing on an East river pier the
alleged throwing of wife, by her husband,
out of second story window; the bloody
beating Of young man by First street liquor
dealer, and the terrible tragedy in Williams
burg on Tuesday afternoon, in which one
brother-in-law assaulted another and was shot,
receiving two mortal bullet wounds in the left
breast, near the heart. On Thursday, our
gloomy record Of murder was ex-
tended by further details Of the Dixon
murder in Illinois an account Of des-
perate assault with hatchet by one
workman upon another, In this city; atelegram
of the recent horrible Indian murders In
Kansas; additional testimony in relation to
the Williamsburg tragedy, and the confession
and death sentence OF the wretch who lately,
in Charlestown, Mass, cut of the head Of his
brother-in-law with sausage axe. The bare
enumeration of the different cases in this
latest batch of murders Is heart-sickening. It
should suffice to cure the public Of all morbid
sympathy with murderers, to fortify impartial
juries and independent judges In their deter
mination to discharge their duty, and to
caution Governors Of States against indulging
too freely In the exercise of their pardoning
power.