inated by four men, who forced their way into the house, and that
she (the niece) had received those wounds in attempting to defend her
relation. According to the circumstances that appeared, this unnatural
wretch had cut the throat of her aunt and benefactress with a
case-knife, then dragged the body from the wash-house to the parlour;
that she had stolen a watch and some silver spoons, and concealed them,
together with the knife and her own apron, which was soaked with the
blood of her parent. After having acted this horrid tragedy, the bare
recital of which the humane reader will not peruse without horror, she
put on another apron, and wounded her own flesh, the better to conceal
her guilt. Notwithstanding these precautions she was suspected, and
committed to prison. Being brought to trial, she was convicted and
condemned upon circumstantial evidence, and finally executed on
Kennington-common, though she denied the fact to the last moment of her
life. At the place of execution she behaved with great composure, and,
after having spent some minutes in devotion, protested she was innocent
of the crime laid to her charge. What seemed to corroborate this
protestation, was the condition and character of the young woman,
who had been educated in a sphere above the vulgar, and maintained
a reputation without reproach in the country, where she was actually
betrothed to a clergyman. On the other hand, the circumstances that
appeared against her almost amounted to a certainty; though nothing
weaker than proof positive ought to determine a jury in capital cases
to give a verdict against the person accused. After all, this is one
of those problematic events which elude the force of all evidence, and
serve to confound the pride of Iranian reason.--A miscreant, whose
name was Haines, having espoused the daughter of a farmer in the
neighbourhood of Gloucester, who possessed a small estate, which he
intended to divide among seven children, was so abandoned as to form
the design of poisoning the whole family, that by virtue of his wife he
might enjoy the whole inheritance. For the execution of this infernal
scheme, he employed his own father to purchase a quantity of arsenic;
part of which he administered to three of the children, who were
immediately seized with the dreadful symptoms produced by this mineral,
and the eldest expired. He afterwards mixed it with three apple-cakes,
which he bought for the purpose, and presented to the thr