was driving to his land, he was met on the road by a
man, who stopped the gig, deliberately shot him through
the heart, and then, having thrown the pistol into the
vehicle, coolly walked away, when the pony proceeded
on its journey, and conveyed the corpse of its master to
the farm. The murder was committed within sight of
hundreds of people reaping in the surrounding fields,
but the slightest attempt was not made either to render
assistance, or to apprehend the assassin. Mr. White
had been an extensive trader in the town of Abbeyleix,
for nearly forty years, and was generally esteemed and
respected.
A Remarkable Case of Imposture has been detected at
Birmingham. In November last, a book was published
in London, as the "Personal Adventures of the Baroness
Von Beck," a Hungarian lady, who, after her husband
had been killed at the barricades of Vienna, underwent
a number of exciting adventures, as a spy, for the
Hungarian patriot army. Having been discovered to be an
impostor, she was arrested at the instance of a Society
for the Succour of Hungarian refugees, together with a
young man named Constant Darra, on the charge of
obtaining money on false pretences. She was to have
been brought before the Birmingham magistrates on the
30th of August; but when the proceedings were about to
commence, every one was shocked by the announcement
that the woman was dead. She had just died in an
ante-room. She had complained of illness that morning,
while in prison; when brought to the court she
appeared much exhausted; a chair was given to her,
and she expired almost instantly. She appeared to be
about fifty years of age. Constant Darra, a young
man of prepossessing appearance, was placed at the bar.
It was proved that there was no such person in
Hungary, during the war, as Baroness Von Beck; no officer
of the name Von Beck was killed at Vienna. The
"Baroness" had issued prospectuses for another work;
and to obtain subscribers for this had been the ostensible
object of her visit to Birmingham. She had received
much sympathy from persons of station and full sources
of information in London; and she met with equal
sympathy and very warm support in Birmingham; subscriptions
were promised for "The Story of My Life," and some
were paid. Mr. George Dawson took a great interest in the
Hungarian lady; and through his introduction she was,
when unwell at a hotel, taken into the family of a
solicitor at Edgbaston. There the imposture became
known, and she and her secretary were arrested. Mr.
Dawson was rather surprised to find that a court-lady
did not speak French; he had, however, no suspicion of
an imposture. Mr. Tyndale, the gentleman who
received the deceased into his house, that she might have
country air, said she frequently spoke of her intimacy
and friendship with Kossuth with great emotion: on
such occasions tears would start into her eyes. Darra
had been at his house almost the whole of the time the
Baroness was his guest. He passed as the secretary and
agent of the Baroness. Mr. Tyndale had received about
£15 or £16 as subscriptions for her new work, and about
seventy or eighty gentlemen in addition had promised
to become subscribers. Mr. Tyndale spoke highly of
Darra. Mr. Paul Hajvik, formerly member of the
Hungarian Diet and Chief Commissioner of police of
Hungary and Transylvania, deposed that the woman's
name was Rascidula; she had been a subordinate paid
spy to the Hungarians; she was an Austrian woman of
low birth, and extremely vulgar; she had no acquaintance
with Kossuth, further than she could claim from
having seen him twice to receive directions. There
is a noble family in Hungary named Beck, but
deceased did not belong to it. Darra, in his defence,
stated that he became acquainted with the Baroness on
her return from Liverpool, and that she had requested
him to obtain subscriptions for her. He believed
her to be what she represented herself. To him the
connexion had been unfortunate, and he was sorry that
he had had an acquaintance with such a woman.
He was, however, quite innocent of any crime. Mr.
Hajvik said he knew the father and family of the
prisoner; one more noble did not exist in Hungary. The
magistrates conferred for a few minutes, and then
discharged the young man. Mr. Dawson said, it might
appear strange and cruel that the prisoner, when suffering
from illness, and who had come to so awful a death,
should have been removed to a prison; but the fact was,
that, on Thursday evening, she danced in a waltz, and
they did not conceive, under such circumstances, that
her apprehension would be followed by such lamentable
results. It appeared at the inquest, that the sudden
death of the woman had been caused by long standing
disease of the heart.
An important Emigration Case was decided by the
magistrates of Liverpool, on the 1st inst. A lady named
Byrne with an infant and servant were entered as
passengers by the ship Ashburton to New York. Mrs.
Byrne, it appears, is a widow, and blind of one eye,
and, after the party had gone on board, they were
objected to by the captain, who alleged that a recent
act, passed by the Congress of New York, prohibited
him taking out such persons under a heavy penalty.
The act renders the captains of vessels responsible for
the maintenance of persons landed in New York who
are either "lunatic, idiot, deaf, dumb, blind, infirm,
maimed, above the age of sixty, under the age of
thirteen, or women without husbands having families."
The captain of the Ashburton having received a copy of
the act before the sailing of the vessel on Friday last,
refused to take Mrs. Byrne and her child, and hence
arose an application under the Passenger Act to recover
the amount of passage-money and compensation for
breach of the contract. It was contended on behalf of
the emigration agent, that he had accepted the complainants
as passengers in ignorance of the act; and that
offers had been made to convey Mrs. Byrne, her child
and servant to New York vià Philadelphia, and also to
pay the expenses they had been at in consequence of
the delay. But Mrs. Byrne objected to this mode of
settlement, and the Court decided that the passage
money must be returned, together with a shilling a-day
each for Mrs. Byrne and her servant since the ship
sailed, and £10 compensation. The case excited great
interest, being the first of the kind brought before the
Court.
Frederick Kent, an English soldier of the 40th
Regiment, now at Cork, has made a Confession of
Murder. He says, that in July, 1841, he was walking
in a place called Ash in Kent, when he met a young
woman, named Betsy Court, whom he suspected of
having some money. He demanded the money, which
she refused to give; an altercation took place, and the
result was that he dragged her into a field and murdered
her with a razor. He hid the body in a corn-field, and
the growing corn concealed it from view until the
harvest, when it was discovered by the persons engaged
in reaping. The soldier is in custody while inquiries
are made.
In the Court of Bankruptcy on the 11th, Commissioner
Fane gave judgment in the case of J. Holthouse,
sugar-broker and wine-merchant in the Minories. The
learned judge Refused the Bankrupt a Certificate, and
accompanied his refusal with some important observations.
The bankrupt, whose effects would not pay two
shillings in the pound, had brought about this result by
"a systematic course of buying on short credit, of the
most respectable wholesale dealers, and therefore at the
lowest price that can be afforded, and almost
immediately after selling for cash at a still lower price, and
with the proceeds paying for goods purchased at a
previous period, the credit for which had just expired,
and thus constantly keeping up a delusive appearance of
solvency, with the undoubted certainty that, sooner or
later, the system must end in bankruptcy; the only
point remaining matter of doubt being how long he
could continue to pay the expenses of his own
subsistence out of the property of his creditors, before some
circumstance should occasion the bursting of the
bubble." This practice had been carried on for many
years; and two of the principal creditors, resenting the
bankrupt's conduct, had refused to concur in a proposed
composition. "I think," said the learned judge, "that
they have acted most properly, and I heartily wish that
creditors would more often imitate their conduct. In
my opinion there is no more legitimate object of
compassion and kindness than a debtor who has struggled
honestly and diligently for a living, and has failed
through the vicissitudes of trade or the knavery of
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