prisoner, then employed as a striper and grinder at the
mill of Mr. M'Clure (late Alfred Orrell), cotton spinner.
She had one child by him, which died some time ago.
Since his marriage the prisoner has been in no regular
employment, and generally absent from home. In May,
1852, he was imprisoned for a month for neglecting to
support his family. His wife had earned a living by
working in a factory, but during the recent turn-out was
compelled to resort to begging for a subsistence, and,
while so engaged, met the prisoner accidentally, as he was
coming out of a mill, where he was at work, at Hyde.
She has recently been living with her father, James
Taylor, in Marsland-street, Portwood; and on Friday
last came home at noon and prepared dinner, but her
children did not come in before she returned to work.
Shortly after six o'clock in the evening her husband
came in, and began to scold her, because she had not
sent him his dinner. He told her he had obtained work
at M'Clure's, and had sent one of her sons to fetch his
dinner. The mother was very much distressed at the
continued absence of her children, believing they were
lost, and she and her husband went out in search of
them. Although the man was covered with fragments
of cotton when he came home, and seemed as if he had
been at work, it appeared on inquiry that such was not
the case. The motive which induced the prisoner to
murder the children is only too apparent, as he would
be entitled to £19 12s. on their deaths, the eldest child
being in three burial clubs, and the other in two. It is
said that he made an attempt to drown the children in
the river Tame about a month ago, but they then made
their escape. When the bodies were found on Monday
they were without any marks of violence. The prisoner
is a native of London, and went to Stockport about
twelve years ago. A coroner's inquest has given a
verdict of wilful murder against Moore, who has been
committed for trial at the next assizes.

On the 3rd inst., the Vice-Chancellor, Sir J. Page
Wood, gave judgment in the suit, The Shrewsbury and
Birmingham Railway Company v. The Directors of the
said Company and Others. This is a very extraordinary
case. The above company, started by local men of
business to accommodate an important district, soon
became a bone of contention between two great rival
companies. The London and North Western is its near
neighbour, and, in order to beat down the profits of the
local line, the metropolitan company conveys passengers
from Shrewsbury to Birmingham at a halfpenny a mile
in first-class carriages; failing thus to overcome the
Shrewsbury line, it has put some of its own directors
into the direction. In 1851 shares were bought and
distributed among the porters of the North Western stations,
and the votes of these men were brought to bear on the
question of the alliance. The Great Western Company
also seek the alliance of the Shrewsbury. And the two
rival companies have been taking strange measures to
gain their object. The North Western gentlemen
manufactured fictitious votes in 1851; and of late, Mr. Knox,
a great partisan of the Great Western, went further into
indirect contrivances. Taking some shares held by him
in trust for the benefit of the company, he manufactured
the signatures of persons accepting and transferring the
shares, wrote in a fictitious handwriting the names of
witnesses to those signatures, and thus created a number
of unreal votes, to be used for the interests of the Great
Western at the Shrewsbury board. Mr. Geach and
Mr. Scott, other directors, but really the agents at the
board of the London and North Western, were personal
witnesses to the official preliminaries of this movement;
but possibly conscious that not being without sin they
could not cast the first stone, they held their peace, until
things grew too bad. The Geach party made a seizure
of the books and papers, in which they found ample
evidence of the illegal manufacture long carried on under
their own eyes. Next calling themselves the "Shrewsbury
and Birmingham Company" they filed a bill in
Chancery to restrain the directors from further action
in the matter, or further dealing in this manner with the
property of the Company. The action was really the
suit of the North Western by its partisans against the
Great Western, represented by Mr. Knox and his fellow-
directors. The Vice-Chancellor's judgment appears to
be an unprecedented censure on the general morals of
railway management. He reviewed the whole case,
strongly denounced the unquestionable culpability of
Mr. Knox's proceedings, but intimated clearly that the
Geach party had no right to accuse any one of such
transactions; in fact, that they did not come into court
with clean hands. He declared that he would make
no order. The proceedings thus fell to the ground,
and by common consent the costs were made costs in the
cause.

A Garotte Robbery was committed at Doncaster on the
evening of Sunday, the 4th inst. Mr. Nutt, of
Manchester, was walking along George-Gate about nine
o'clock, when he was attacked by two young men in
dark-coloured clothes, and seized by the throat by one,
whilst the other took from him a £10 Bank of England
note, and from forty to fifty shillings in silver. Both of
them made a desperate effort to take his watch, but they
failed. The street where the robbery took place is a
public thoroughfare, not a hundred yards from the
market-place, and the main street in the town.

A man has been tried and convicted of having Stolen
a Swarm of Bees at a place called West Calder, in
Scotland. He had become so dexterous in this species
of depredation, that he had acquired the soubriquet in
the district of "Bee Robbie." His plan was to secure
the Queen, and the rest of the swarm instantly followed
him—leaving hive, honey, and all behind. He was
sentenced to two months' imprisonment.

There are almost daily cases before the police courts
of Brutal Outrages Committed by Men upon their
Wives. Three such cases occurred in one day, the 5th
instant. At Marylebone, William Skinner, a costermonger,
was charged by his wife with ill-using her and
their children. She deposed that she had been married
fifteen years to the prisoner, by whom she had had six
children. On the preceding Saturday night while she
was employed in knitting a pair of socks for her little
girl, in order that she might make a decent appear-
ance at chapel next morning, the prisoner, who had
been drinking, came in, and after swearing that he would
break her jaw, struck her three times with great
violence on the face. He then quitted the house, and
at about 2 in the morning, returned completely intoxicated,
and beat his son John, 11 years of age, in a most
shameful manner. He declared that he would do for
him; and, from the injury which was inflicted upon
him, he bled profusely from the nose and mouth. The
poor woman added, that for a considerable period she
had been subjected to cruel treatment at the hands of
the prisoner, who was continually passing away his time
at a beer-shop with many other worthless and drunken
characters, all of whom were in the habit of ill-using
their wives and families. John Skinner (the boy)
stated that, when drunk, his father often beat his
mother. At 2 o'clock in the morning, he (witness) was
just about to go to bed, having been afraid to go before,
when prisoner entered the room and said to him,
"Come here, I want to give you something." He
(witness) went towards him, upon which the prisoner
immediately seized him, and holding him securely fixed
under his arm, thumped him several times upon the
face. This evidence was confirmed by two police officers,
one of whom swore that the prisoner, on his taking him
into custody, struck and kicked him violently. They
added that the poor woman was quite sober. The
magistrate sentenced the prisoner to two months'
imprisonment for the assault upon his wife, one month
for that upon his boy, another month for the assault
upon the constable, in each case with hard labour.

At Lambeth, Charles Simpson, a potter, was charged
with Assaulting his Wife. Mr. Henry Treble, a
tradesman residing in Vauxhall-walk, deposed that
about 11 o'clock on the previous Saturday night, while
on his way home, he saw the prisoner holding his wife
on the pavement and striking her about the face and
head in a very brutal manner. The screams of the wife
caused a mob to assemble, and, several persons having
remonstrated with him, the prisoner left off striking for
a little while, and during this short interval the wife
caught the prisoner by the hair. The prisoner kicked
her violently on the side, and again struck her about the
face so that she could not see from one of her eyes. Mr.
Knight, another respectable witness, corroborated the