A Revengeful Fool Punished.

Hastings Standard, Issue 279, 24 March 1897, Page 4

A Revengeful Fool Punished.

At Carlisle recently Joseph Bell, miner, aged 41, was charged with leaving his residence without notifying the fact to the police as he was bound as a ticket-of-leave man to do; also with carrying firearms with intent to murder.

The prisoner was convicted at the Cumberland Assizes in 1882 of attempting to murder his brother, John Bell, grocer, Dalston, near Carlisle, and his brother's wife, by the use of dynamite or tenite. The prisoner had gone to Dalston in the summer of 1882, and at night had thrown an explosive missile into a room which he believed to be occupied by John Bell and his wife. He had, however, mistaken the house. The occupant of the room into which the missle fell was a Miss Brown, w r ho, on being awakened by the hissing of the fuse, called out that the house was on fire. Her nephew on hearing the cry of alarm ran into her bedroom. He saw the missle on the floor—it was an indiarubber hose a yard and a half long, with a hard ball at the end—and, picking it up. he threw it out of the room into a lobby. There it exploded and did great damage to the building. Mr Justice Day characterised the prisoner's crime as a diabolical and carefully-planned attempt to gratify his feelings of revenge against his sister-in-law Martha Bell for some fancied wrong, and sentenced him to twenty years' penal servitude. Last September when he had served between fourteen and fifteen years of his sentence, he was libei ated on license by the Home Secretary, in compliance with a local memorial.

On December 26 the released convict went to Dalston and visited his brother, who offered him supper which he declined. The prisoner seemed friendly, but refused to say why he was in the neighborhood. The brother accompanied him part of the way towards Carlisle, and before they parted prisoner showed him a revolver and remarked, " I would be the end of your missus if it was not for you." On January 2 Police - constable Fisher apprehended the prisoner for failing to report himself. Ho had a revolver in his pocket and twenty-five ball cartridges for it. To the officer he remarked, when at the police-station, "I'll do the old woman, Martha, at Dalston."

The magistrates said they must forfeit the prisoners license, and Bell was sent to complete the unexpired portion of his sentence of twenty years' penal servitude.