and there is no doubt they were those of a father and
two sons, the result of a Double Murder and a Suicide.
The pond is a piece of water near the High Bridge, and
when the river-tide has entered it the water is twelve
feet deep. Two bargemen discovered the bodies. The
two youths were tied together by cord, and the arms
and legs of the father were bound together by willow
withs. A waterman recognised the man as a person he
met walking on the towing-path on the previous evening,
and he had met the youths following him at some
distance behind. The elder, about eleven years old,
was carrying the younger, about seven years old, and he
said his father was on before him. It seems that the
father had inquired at more than one place to get beds
for himself and children. A coroner's inquest was held
on the 13th. The waterman who drew the bodies from
the water described how they were tied. The two
children were tied face to face by stout cord, which left
them a foot apart; they were not blindfolded, and there
was no mark of any violence on them. The father
had his arms and feet bound together by willow withs
tightly twisted, but in such a manner as he could have
done it himself. It proved that he was Mr. Spankhurst,
a master basket-maker of Barking. He left home on
Wednesday, in anger with his wife; but as he had
done so before, taking the boys with him for a day
or two, she hoped they would again return safely. He
wished to take his little daughter with the boys; but his
wife sent word to the teacher of the school not to let the
little girl go with her father, and so the child escaped.
On Thursday morning Mrs. Spankhurst received this
note from her husband:—

"April 7.
"By the time you receive this, me and my boys will be locked
in the arms of death; and I am very unhappy that my girl is
not with us. You have to thank your own temper towards me,
and I made up my mind on my pillow this morning what I
should do, before I started; but I have little comments to make,
but your temper has been that to me, that it has played on my
mind for some time, but it finished before this time; and I hope
that my girl will grow and be a good girl, and I should have
been happy to have had her.with us; and I hope that you will
govern your temper for the future. You have no one to thank
but yourself for this, and I hope that you will do well.

"God bless you both for ever. Amen. N.S."

Following up the clue of the post-mark, the poor woman
put the police at Chelsea on the search; but nothing
was discovered by them till the dead bodies were found
accidentally. At the inquest, the apprentice of Mr.
Spankhurst stated facts which showed that his master
had been in a desponding state of mind for some time,
and which quite exonerated his master's wife from the
unkind charges against her in the melancholy letter.
The jury returned this verdict—"That the two boys,
Nathaniel Joseph Spankhurst and William Spankhurst,
were wilfully murdered by their father, Nathaniel John
Spankhurst; who afterwards committed suicide by
drowning while in a fit of temporary insanity."

A Commission of Lunacy held at Kinmel has declared
that William Lewis Baron Dinorben, of Kinmel Park,
Denbighshire, has been of unsound mind since January
1846. The inquiry was very brief: three medical men
gave testimony, and Lord Dinorben appeared before the
jury; there was no doubt of his unfortunate condition.
Dr. Phillips Jones, who had attended him from infancy,
stated that he had never known him to be capable of
any act requiring the exercise of reason and sagacity;
the affliction originated from inflammation of the brain
in infancy. As it was not necessary to fix a very early
period as the date of the lunacy, 1846 was assumed.

A man, named Daws, gardener to Mr. Ayre, of
Castle Rising, near Lynn, has Murdered his Wife and
Daughter, and Drowned Himself. It had been noted
of late that he seemed to be in a state of mental depression.
Early on the morning of the 10th instant, his
body was found in a shallow stream not far from his
cottage; there was a slight wound in the throat. When
people went to break the news to the wife, they could
obtain no answer from within the house. The door was
forced, and it was found that both mother and daughter
had been murdered. A coroner's jury having heard
evidence proving that he had formerly exhibited signs of
madness, returned a verdict of "Temporary insanity"
in his case.

Another Murder was committed in the same
neighbourhood, and on the same day. James Pearce and
William Day, two boys about twelve years of age, were
"crow-scaring" in a field at Outwell Fen; Pearce
having a gun to fire off occasionally at the birds, with a
little powder and wadding only. The two boys
quarrelled; Pearce was struck in the eye; and he fired the
gun at Day, so close to him that the wadding was driven
into his brain, and he died in a few minutes. Day was
missed in the course of the day; his brother hunted for
him all night; and at last, on the following morning,
found his body buried in a dry ditch, and his cap underneath
the ashes of a quitch fire, in which an attempt
had been made to burn it. Pearce, when arrested, first
said he did not kill Day, but he helped to bury him;
then, that he did kill him; and then, again, that he did
not do it. At the coroner's inquest, his family swore
that they knew nothing of the murder till the body was
found. A jury returned a verdict of "Manslaughter,"
against the opinion of the coroner, who said that Pearce
would be tried for murder, notwithstanding. After the
verdict, some members of Pearce's family confessed that
they knew of the murder on the afternoon of the day it
took place, and that one of them went out and himself
buried the body out of sight. The boy was afterwards
brought before the Downham magistrates, when he
made this statement: "I did shoot him, but I could not
help it; I held out the gun towards him and it went off;
and then I buried him because I was afraid." He was
committed for trial on a charge of killing and slaying, so that
he can be indicted either for murder or manslaughter.

A lunatic, named Armsworth, has committed Suicide,
near the Farnborough station. On Good Friday he was
sent from the Union-house, to walk in the fields for the
sake of his health, a person accompanying him as a
guard; though his quiet behaviour in the house had led
to a belief that he was not at all disposed to suicide.
When they were near the railway, an express-train was
seen to approach; the lunatic darted away from his keeper,
ran on to the rails, and advanced to meet the train; the
people in charge of the train tried to stop it, but there
was no time, and the madman was crushed to death.

The Inefficacy of the Poor-law in affording the relief
for which it is intended, was exemplified at the Clerkenwell
police court on the 17th inst. A sickly-looking
youth, about 18 years old, applied to the court for relief.
He wandered from his native place, in Yorkshire, in
search of employment, three months ago, but having
been unable to obtain any, he had sold what few articles
he possessed, and had now left only the tattered
garments he was wearing. On the previous day, overcome
with illness, he called at the Royal Free Hospital, Gray's
Inn Lane, after applying in vain for sustenance at
different workhouses and other places; his immediate wants
were at once attended to, and he was directed to apply
to the sitting magistrate to interfere with some parish
to forward him to his proper settlement. The magistrate
ordered a constable to go and see what he could do with
the applicant amongst the different overseers of the
district. In a short time, the constable returned, and
said that he had been with the young man to the
workhouses of St. Pancras, Clerkenwell, and St. Andrew,
Holborn, but could not move either of the parish
authorities to take pity on his charge. The magistrate observed
that such conduct was abominable. The constable said
that the ground of refusal to relieve was in consequence
of the applicant not having slept in either parish. The
magistrate asked if a fellow-creature was to be allowed
to perish in the street on that account? He added,
that, under all the circumstances, the applicant should
be provided with a bed and proper nourishment in that
neighbourhood, and the parish wherein that happened
should take all the legal consequences afterwards, if it
refused to obey his order to relieve, and otherwise do
justice to the young man, whose looks too plainly showed
how much he had suffered.

The Court of Exchequer, on the 19th, gave judgment
in the action for Penalties against Alderman Salomans,
for having voted in Parliament, as a member returned
for Greenwich, without having taken the oath of
abjuration. Mr. Baron Martin's opinion was in favour of the
defendant. He held that the substance of the oath did
not include the obligatory words, "on the true faith of