During the hearing of the case she was accommodated with a seat. She was pale and looked careworn.

Mr. Parkes described the robbery and assault, to which he had already deposed in the Police Court, in the following terms:-"I have been five years with my present employers. On January 12th a man, who gave the name of Tyrrell, came to Mr. Ryder's shop and saw one of the assistants, who showed him some jewellery. He selected several articles, and, stating that he wished to make a present to his wife, requested that an assortment of jewellery might be sent to his house, No. 4, Upper Berkeley-street, in order that the lady might choose for herself. About half-past five in the afternoon I went to the address he had given with a quantity of diamond ornaments, which I carried in a small bag, and which were worth altogether between 50007. and 60007. The front door was opened by Tyrrell, who made some excuse for the absence of his servant. He invited me to go upstairs, and conducted me into the drawing-room. The prisoner was there, sitting by the fire. There were no chairs at that end of the room where I was. I stood at one side of the table. Tyrrell stood immediately opposite to me, and the prisoner close to him. I opened my bag and took out the five cases of diamond ornaments which Tyrrell had seen in the shop, leaving the rest of the jewellery in the bag, which I placed at my feet beneath the table. They expressed their admiration as they examined the various articles of which I told them the prices. At last Tyrrell said he should like his wife to have a necklace valued at 11007., or a smaller necklace valued at 5507., with a diamond pendant worth 1857., and either one or two rings valued respectively at 3857, and 1607., and remarked to the prisoner that he thought her sister had better see them previously to their decision being made. He then asked the prisoner to call her sister. She left the room. In about two

minutes I heard her return. She said her sister would be there in a few minutes. She came quickly behind me and placed a handkerchief saturated with something over my nose and mouth. As she did so the man rushed at me and clasped me round the arms, while the woman continued to hold the handkerchief in my face. I managed to get free for a minute and got the handkerchief away. The man seized me by the throat. He said nothing. The woman, getting behind me, again applied the handkerchief to my face. I began to feel a stifling sensation. The man maintained his hold of me, although I struggled to get away. In the end I was overpowered and forced down on a sofa. During all this time he did not call the woman by name. I suppose that I then became unconscious. When I came to my senses I found my arms strapped across my chest, another strap round my wrists, fastening my hands together, and a third strap round my legs. Tyrrell was standing over me. He said that if I moved he would murder me. I begged him to loosen the strap across my chest, as the pain was so great. He undid the strap and let it out by the space between two of the holes. I struggled to get myself in a sitting posture to look at the table, which was behind me, in order to see what was being done with the jewellery. Tyrrell forced me down, and tied a handkerchief over my eyes. He said if I was quiet some one would be sent to me in ten minutes. I heard him leave the room, but I did not hear the prisoner go out. Before leaving the room, he said, 'Quick, Lucy, quick! bring my hat.' I cannot say how long I lay there. I heard the street door slam, and directly made an effort to rise; and

P

when I had, with my teeth, unfastened the strap round my hands, I removed the other straps, and with the poker broke a window and called for assistance. In a few minutes some one came. The three straps produced (stout luggage straps about an inch wide) and this pocket-handkerchief were in the room. I found that the jewellery which I had placed on the table, with the exception of a small gold chain, had disappeared. The leathern cases had been left. The jewellery which I had not taken from the bag was safe. I have no doubt that the prisoner is the woman who was engaged in the robbery. She was not dressed as she is now, but in a much more fashionable style."

The prisoner's husband (described as a man of gentlemanly manners and good appearance, and well dressed) was identified with "Tyrrell" by means of a photograph.

Arthur Nicholls said that a man named Tyrrell came in January to his master's, and engaged the house in Berkeley-street. He gave a reference to an hotel-keeper at Bath, and a satisfactory letter being received in reply, possession was given him on the 10th of January. The rent was to be six guineas a week.

Susan Cook: "I was sent to No. 4, Upper Berkeley-street on the 10th January as Mrs. Tarpey's cook. I was engaged on the recommendation of Mrs. Flight. I went on the Tuesday, and remained till the Thursday. On the Wednesday Mr. Tarpey came to look over the premises, and remained a short time. On the Thursday afternoon he and Mrs. Tarpey came in a cab. They had no luggage. About an hour afterwards the drawing-room bell rang, and when I went up Mrs. Tarpey gave me a letter to take to a Miss Pearson, Highfield-house, Tulse-hill. I went, but could find no such person there. On my return I found Mr. and Mrs. Tarpey had left, and that the house was in possession of the police."

Miss Pitt, Windsor-villa, Champion-terrace, Leamington, said: "In June Mr. and Mrs. Tarpey came to live at my house. On the 9th January Mr. Tarpey went to London. The prisoner had previously told me she should want to go away for a day, and she wondered if a nurse could come to take charge of the child. On the 11th January I received two telegrams for her, and she gave me, at the same time, a letter to post, addressed to a house in Oxford-street. In the evening she asked me to order a cab to take her to the station next morning. She left Leamington by the 9.40 train, and as she started she said it was just possible she might not return that evening, and if not she would send a telegram. I saw her when dressing that morning. She had on a silk dress, a jacket, a waterproof cloak, and hat, and carried in her hand a small tin box. On the evening of the 12th I received a telegram, and about two o'clock the next morning she and her husband returned. She came into my bed-room, and said they had posted from Rugby, and borrowed a sovereign for the purpose of paying the cabman. She then wore a bonnet. The next morning I noticed a little mark under one of her eyes. Mr. Tarpey had shaved off his beard, and left but a little 'imperial.' Mrs. Tarpey asked me if I thought it made him look younger, and whether he was not like a Frenchman? During the day I became suspicious, and went into their dressing-room, and, seeing a bunch of keys in the drawer of a table, I unlocked it and looked in. There were two small bottles marked 'drugs' and a little box of dye, with a brush, and a new razor, and a pocket-handkerchief. The handkerchief was near to the bottles.

Two hours afterwards I again looked into the drawer, and then found it was empty. Mr. Tarpey was in and out of the dressing-room many times during the day. I watched him all the time. When he went out he locked the door after him. On the Sunday a foreign Bradshaw was brought for Mr. Tarpey, and on the Monday he left, but I did not see him leave. The prisoner asked me that morning if I would like to see a London newspaper. On the Wednesday evening I took tea with her, and communicated with Superintendent Lund, of the Leamington police, certain facts which led to her apprehension."

Mr. Montagu Williams submitted there was no case to go to the jury. The prisoner, undoubtedly, was a married woman, and no question would arise as to that; but he should ask his lordship whether, considering the law as defined by the different authorities, she was not entitled to an acquittal. The prisoner, to all appearance, was acting under coercion; she was, in fact, under the influence and control of her husband, and therefore was not responsible for her conduct.-Mr. Straight said it was perfectly clear that in cases where violence was used, the wife was equally responsible with the husband. The Recorder: It is perfectly clear that the presence of the husband raises only a primâ facie presumption, which is capable of being rebutted by the evidence in particular cases.-Mr. Montagu Williams: Then your lordship thinks that it must go to the jury?-The Recorder: Yes; the evidence goes to show that she was not acting under the coercion of her husband.

Mr. Montagu Williams then addressed the jury, after which the Recorder briefly summed up the case. The simple question was, ay or no, did they believe she was exercising her own free will at the time the handkerchief was applied, and was not under the control or coercion of her husband P-The jury, after a brief consultation, returned the following verdict:-"We are of opinion that the whole matter was pre-arranged by the husband, and that the prisoner acted under his coercion and control at the time."-This being tantamount to a verdict of Not Guilty, the prisoner was ordered to be discharged.

Mr. Metcalfe intimated his intention of proceeding against the prisoner for an assault and occasioning bodily harm; but the Recorder, after consulting Mr. Baron Bramwell on the subject, said that he should be compelled to sum up the same way as he had under the principal charge, and therefore it would be useless, after the verdict of the jury, to carry the case further.The prisoner was then formally Acquitted on all the charges.

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This extraordinary verdict was the subject of much comment, from the absurd light in which it placed the law of marital coercion, and the wisdom of juries. Mr. Williams had got up his case triumphantly. It would have been hard to devise," one report said, "any thing more effective than that which presented itself to the jury naturally whenever they turned to the dock. The pretty blue-eyed babe, in its frills, ribbons, and long robes of spotless white, behaving, as a stout lady remarked, as good as gold;' the ladylike young mother ministering to it as tenderly and unaffectedly as if she were in her nursery at home, and without a care; even the occasional offers of assistance from the female warder who sat behind, and who seemed to merge the official in the woman whenever she spoke to her charge-all made a touching commentary on Mr. Montagu Williams's eloquent denun

ciations and appeals. The jury were of the comfortable family-man type; middle-aged, respectable men of business, with the tender side to their natures coming uppermost whenever the little ones at home are thought of. The notion of a poor woman having to face a court full of men under such circumstances as environed the unhappy Mrs. Tarpey, and the manifest evidences of her affection for her infant and for her absent husband, were the very things to touch their hearts; and, when its refreshment was concluded and the tiny thing was handed with infinite care to the gaoleress who took it to her arms while Mrs. Tarpey turned her face to her judges, there was not a man among them who did not seem to think more of his own Mrs. Blank and the interesting circumstances attending her last confinement, than of Messrs. London and Ryder's jewels or the punishment to be awarded to their thief. Robbery with violence, and an infant at the breast; deep and nefarious plotting, and the honest trusting eyes of babyhood; the administration of a noxious drug, and a fair young mother's innocent pride in her first darling-the things seemed so incongruous as to be incompatible, and some shrewd observers shook their heads knowingly when the baby was transferred and its mother's face was seen. A determined mouth with the under jaw extending beyond the upper, and closing firmly; a long upper lip; rounded cheeks, and a clear complexion; a well-shaped nose, with just sufficient upward tendency to be piquant; large blue eyes, the deeply-rooted sadness of which did not destroy their beauty; ears, with openings which are too large for symmetry, and which protrude too much from the head for grace; and a broad full forehead so deeply lined as to be almost wrinkled— such was Mrs. Tarpey as she appeared at her trial. She kept her seat in the front of the dock during the whole of the proceedings, and this brought her chin to the level of its front; while her trim figure, in its blue cloth jacket and tippet of fur, and her ungloved shapely white hands, filled up a personal portrait which made a strange contrast to the deed of violence with which the prisoner was charged. Mr. Montagu Williams, in his successful endeavours to exonerate the wife, abused the husband in good round terms, and at each of his accusations the prisoner had shaken her head in indignant denial. When the verdict was given Mrs. Tarpey looked even sadder than before; and the applause which came from the people in the body of the court appeared to frighten her. Then came a temporary delay, while the Recorder consulted Mr. Baron Bramwell, and then a ladylike little figure is observed to nimbly follow a woman and a baby down the steps at the back of the dock, and that is the last seen of the acquitted Martha Tarpey."

The acquittal of Mrs. Tarpey, however, led to the arrest and conviction of her husband. After the trial she dyed her hair black and went about dressed in mourning; but the police watched her to a house in Marylebone-road, where Michael Tarpey was discovered and detected, in spite of shaved whiskers.

On being put on his trial he pleaded Guilty, and was brought up for judgment on May 2.

Mr. Williams stated that the prisoner had given information to Messrs. London and Ryder, by which a quantity of the stolen property had been recovered.

Mr. Straight said that Mr. Ryder had diamonds that were stolen from him.

recovered about 8007. worth of the As to the rest, information had

certainly been given with regard to the places at which they had been sold, unquestionably very much below their value; but they had been disposed of in a foreign country, and were not likely to be recovered. He had already stated that the prisoner was in great pecuniary difficulty in consequence of his having been engaged in betting transactions. It also appeared, from a statement that had been made, that the prisoner and his wife had been reading some work of fiction in which a robbery of this sort was described. They at first ridiculed the notion of such a thing, but it grew upon them, and they then projected and carried out this scheme. The prisoner, since his apprehension, had had what he (the learned counsel) might call the audacity to apologize to Mr. Ryder for making him the subject of the robbery, which, he said, was originally intended to be committed upon Mr. Harry Emmanuel. There were two packets of diamonds found, one containing twenty-four and the other thirteen. There was also a diamond found sewn up in the waistband of the prisoner's trousers, and when asked what it was put there for, he said he had intended to give it to his wife.

The Recorder, addressing the prisoner, said "You have pleaded guilty to the indictment charging you with robbery, and the prosecutors have not thought it right to proceed with the indictment which charged you with administering a drug with a view to render the person robbed insensible. I have, therefore, only to deal with the indictment to which you have pleaded guilty. The circumstances of that case as disclosed show that it was a carefully and artfully prepared plan to rob a tradesman of a considerable amount of property, and a robbery that was attended with a certain amount of violence, in order to enable you to succeed in your object. The sentence of the Court upon you is that you be kept in penal servitude for a term of eight years."

VI.

THE TRIAL OF EDMUND POOK.

On the 12th of July, Edmund Walter Pook, Printer, was brought up for trial at the Central Criminal Court, before Chief Justice Bovill, on the charge of wilfully murdering Jane Maria Clousen on the 25th of April.

The girl was found lying nearly dead of terrible wounds in a lane near Eltham, in Kent, by a policeman, on the morning of the 26th. It was ascertained that she had recently lived as servant in the family of a Mr. Pook, a stationer, at Greenwich, and the suspicions of the police were directed to his son, Edmund Walter Pook, as having been concerned in the murder. The girl was taken to Guy's Hospital on the 27th, and lingered in an insensible state till the 30th, when she died. She had been unable to give any clue to the murderer. It was ascertained in the hospital that she was two months advanced in pregnancy.

At the close of a long inquiry before the Coroner, a verdict of wilful murder had been found against Edmund Pook, who was arrested, and, after examination at the Greenwich Police Court, committed for trial.

The Solicitor-General, with Mr. Poland and Mr. Archibald, prosecuted on