MURDER OF THE REV. MR. HILL IN PENTRIDGE STOCKADE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IV, Issue 128, 3 June 1869, Page 2

MURDER OF THE REV. MR. HILL IN PENTRIDGE STOCKADE.

(From the Melbourne Age.) Pentriflge Stockade was on the 14th May, the scene of oue of the most horrible tragedies recorded for some time past. At about half-past 1 o'clock, th-5 Rev. William Hill, the Wesleyan chaplain, in the exercise of his ministerial functions, visited the cell of James Ritson, who is undergoing a sentence for shooting* at Market Inspector Kinsella. in the Eastern Market, some twelve months since. On arriving at the cell Mr. Hill was admitted by Warder Moran, and the door locked after him in the*" 1 usual manner, he and the convict being alone together. What passed between them is conjecture, but shortly afterwards the warder heard Mr. Hill exclaim, " Mercy, man." but thinking it only a part of the rev. gentleman's discourse, he paid no further attention to it. Shortly afterwards, however, he heard a blow, and he immediately tried to open the door, but found it barricaded. After a violent effort he succeeded in forcing it open, when a terrible spectacle appeared. On the floor, welter-. ing in a pool of blood, was poor Mr. Hill in his death agony, while at the further end of the cell, the murderer was standing erect, but Jpale, and trembling violently, still grasping in his right hand the weapon with which he had committed the foul deed. The warder sprang in upon Ritson, and after a brief but violent struggle, succeeded in mastering him. Immediately on securing the prisoner, Dr. Eeed, the resident surgeon, was sent for, but before he arrived Mr. Hill had breathed his last. The cell in which the murder had been committed presented a sad sight. In the middle of the floor lay the body, in a pool of blood, the back of the head, which was ex» posed, being literally smashed in. Not far from it lay the instrument with which the murderer had effected his design, where it had evidently been dropped in. the struggle with the warder. The weapon turned out to be one of the hinges of the prisoner's bed board, which he had wrenched off by some unaccountable means. Armed with. this, he had evidently waited for some one to enter the cell, and on Mr. Hill unsuspectingly visiting him on an errand of mercy, he appears to have set upon him, and unmercifully battered in his skull. The words which the warder patrolling outside of the cell, heard, must have been the last the unfortunate gentleman uttered.