THE BERMONDSEY MURDER. [From the Times.]

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 467, 23 January 1850, Page 4

THE BERMONDSEY MURDER. [From the Times.]

The black chronicles of crime keep pace with the frailties of this eventful season. Since the head of Mr. Hayes was exposed for re' cognition seventy years ago upon a pole in St. Margaret's churchyard, there has not been so much excitement created by any murder in this metropolis as by the atrocity of which Minver-place, Bermondsey, has just been the scene, The famous murders of the Marr and Williamson families were of a different character, and the agitation which they caused depended more upon alarm than abhorrence. No householder thought himself safe in his bed when family after family were butchered in a heap by some inscrutable assassins. In the present case, however, the popular indignation is not aggravated by any such dread. The deed of blood was committed in a locality to which the victim bad been previously lured, and under circumstances which his own misconduct rendered favourable to the crime ; yet still, if the details which have hitherto come to light are steadily reviewed, we think that it will be granted that a more deliberate and cold-blooded murder was never perpetrated. We speak of course at this early stage of the transaction, with some reserve, but the atrocity will -admit of a connected narrative without any encroachment upon the requisitions of even-handed justice. Minver-place, Bermondsey, has been already visited by too many of our metropolitan readers to need a description ; but it is desirable to state, for the proper information of those who have no such direct means of self instruction, that the tenements in question are situated so closely together, with such thin party walls, and with such perfect command of the windows of one ovei the yards and gardens of the other, that not a sight nor sound could well pass unperceived — a circumstance which will in no small degree augment the wonders of the story which is to follow. In the third house of this row resided Frederick Manning, and Maria his wife, the former of whom had been discharged with a character seriously blemished from the employ of the Great Western Railway Company some twelve months ago, while the latter had come from the service of the Duchess of Sutherland, with personal and intellectual accomplishments considerably above those of her husband. Among her acquaintances was the murdered man, Patrick O'Connor a guager in the Customs, reputed to be possessed of a considerable amount of money, which he was in the habit of putting out at usury. What turn his intimacy took with Maria Manning it is not necessaay now to inquire, but he was at least in the habit of supping with her at the house in question, which she and her husband had occupied for about six months. On Wednesday the Bth of this month, O'Connor, in company with a friend, walked from his own lodging at Mile-end to Minver-place, where, though the hour was as late as ten p.m. he seems to have been readily received, and indeed, to have been expected at dinner that day. Here they remained till about half-past eleven smoking and talking, but nothing was produced to drink, and, in fact, it has since been deposed that the deceased was a teetotaller — a circumstance not without its significance hereafter. From some cause or other, however, O'Connor felt weak and faint, and Maria Manning rubbed his temples with Eau de Cologne, after which he rallied and walked away with his friend. On the succeeding afternoon he was again met in, the streets, on his way, as he acknowledged, to the same house, and in the same back parlour, smoking and conversing with Maria Manning, as before, he was seen that evening also ; after which he appeared no more alive. His absence from his duty in the London Docks was observed on the morning following, and when Saturday and Monday still wore on without bringing any tidings of the missing man, ipquiries were at length set on foot. So well was his acquaintance with the Mannings' known to his friends that the house in Minver-place was the first quarter resorted to. The visitprs then found it te-

nanted just as before, and were received by Maria Manning w|jth great coolness and composure, but with no information regardjgg the object of their search. Two days later, how,ever, that is to say on Friday last, the 17th, the police in the prosecution of their researches returned to the house, and then discovered that in the interval its occupants had deserted it. Strengthened by this circumstance in their suspicions, they novr effected an entry into the premises and explored the apartments and garden, though in vain, until one of the officers more sharp-sighted than the others, thought he detected some trace of recent removal in one of the flagstones with which the back kitchen was neatly paved. They proceeded accordingly to take up the flags and remove the earth beneath, when in a square hole filled up with quick lime, they discovered the body of O'Connor, lying on its face, and with his legs tied up to the haunches, to make it fit the receptacle. So rapidly had the lime done its work in consuming the coipse that its identity was only established by the remarkable and less perishable features of an extremely prominent chin and a set of false teeth, by aid of which the body has been now providentially identified beyond all dispute. The circumstances which have been sttice brought to light disclose an almost incredible amount of deliberate barbarity. The examination of the mutilated remains has shewn that the murdered man must have been first stupified by laudanum, and indeed two bottles with traces of such poison have been discovered on the premises, one of which, a cut glass bottle from a lady's scent | box, was smeared with lime. The first act of violence was then committed, it is supposed, with an air gun, for two large slugs were discovered near the froijtal bone, and it is said to have been impossible that fire arms, however small, could have been discharged in the house, without alarming the neighbours, so thin were the partitions of the tenements. The course of this wound, however, shows that it was not fatal, and then the murder must have been consummated with a heavy hammer, for the back part of the skull was found entirely beaten in fragments into the brain by the violence of successive blows. What we are now going to add almost exceeds credibility, and yet it has been authentically deposed. From the statements made to the police it appears that the hole was dug for the body and the lime purchased to consume it more than six weeks ago, so that the deceased must have sat nightly, in company with his murderers, over the grave prepared for him ! Nor does it appear that even after the deed they were scared from the abode by a knowledge of what lay beneath the floor, for until the inquiries of the police alarmed them they dwelt in perfect unconcern over the well scoured flags under which their victim was rotting in the lime. We are withheld by obvious considerations from attempting to trace out more particularly the motives and method of the deed ; but if, on the one hand, we can only record with Reluctance such a stigma upon the age in which we live, we can, at least, on the other, point to the rapid and unerring course of justice by which one of the presumed criminals has already been arrested to account for her deeds. The fugitive was tracked from her house to a cabriolet, from the cabriolet to the metropolitan terminus, and from this terminus to Edinburgh, By the aid of the electric telegraph, the order was despatched from the capital of England to the capital of Scotland, executed, and returned within a single hour. Seated in fancied security in her new lodgings, Maria Manning was perusing in the columns of this journal the narrative of the catastrophe which had been planned and perpetrated in her late abode, when the entrance of the Minister of Justice interrupted her studies. So great had been the excitement on the subject, that when, at one moment, it was conceived that the fugitives had sailed for New York, two powerful war steamers were immediately pl&ced at the disposal of the police, and one of them actually succeeded in overtaking the suspected packet and mustering and examining her passengers and crew. They had not, however, adopted any such means of escape, and both, we doubt not, will speedily be placed at the bar of justice to answer for their alleged misdeeds. The following particulars in reference to Maria Manning will probably be read with interest : — Her maiden name is not " Rue," as has been erroneously stated, but "De Roux." She is a native of Lausanne, in Switzerland, and inherited some small patrimony from her parents, both of whom are deceased. About six years since, she served in the family of Sir Lawrence Palk, at Haldon House, Devonshire, as maid to Lady Palk, and while travelling to and fro with this family she appears to have made the acquaintance of Manning, who was at that time a guard on the Great Western Railway. At Lady Palk's decease, in 1846, she obtained a situation as maid to Lady Blantyre, second daughter of the Duchess of Sutherland. She came to reside mth her Ladyship'afr Stafford

House, in July, 1846, and accompanied her to Scotland in the autumn of the same year. While attending her Ladyship on a brief Continental tour, before proceeding to Scotland, she met with the deceased O'Connor, who seems to have been struck -with • her appearance and manners— so mu^h so is to have offered her marriage. In the early part of the season, 1847, she returned to town, with Lady Blantyre, and it appears m as frequently visited at Stafford House, by both Manning and O'Connor, the latter of whom . appeared to entertain a very warm affection for her. Manning, however, seems to have been the most favoured suitor, and on the 6th of August 1847» she left Stafford House with the avowed intention of marrying him. Whether the. ceremony was ever performed is not known *t present, but it is certain that she urged an old nurse in the establishment to be present— -a request, however, which was not acceded to. As an illustration of the woman's finesse it may be mentioned that upon her leaving Stafford House handsome presents were made to her ; and not only was this kindly interest in her own welfare diiplayed, but a relative of her supposed husband, Manning, recently received a public employment. After her marriage she accompanied Manning into Devonshire for a week or ten days, and then, returning to Stafford House, went with Lady Blantyre to the Continent a second time, one motive for her doing so, being, as it is alleged, the opportunity it afforded of arra °£gH£ her own affairs abroad previously to j£fl9|S* Jown to married life in England. ■ A^pjCbis , time she had been deceiving Patrick O Connor as to her marriage with Manning, , and when O'Connor ascertained that she was really married, be manifested the greatest distress of mind, tore the hair from his head, and conducted himself altogether in a most extraordinary manner. On her return from the Continent, she went to reside with her husband in lodgings at No. 2, Church-street, Paddington, Manning, at this time, still filling the situation of Guard on the Great Western Railway. It is believed that Manning in prosecuting his addresses succeeded in pursuading Maria de Roux that he was entitled to properly uuder his mother's will, amounting to between £600 and £700. This was of course only a fiction ; but so deeply did he lay his schemes that he actually drew up a will, which has been found among the papers in his wife's possession, by which he bequeathed this property to his "very dear and beloved wife," to the exclusion of all other claimants, appointing her executor, conjointly with Henry Poole, recently convicted of the mail robberies, on the Great Western Railway, who is one of the subscribing witnesses to the deed. There does not appear to be the least reason to believe that Manning had any v p r o? ert y himself, but with the money he obtained from his wife, very shortly after her marriage he took a public house or hotel at Taunton, which promised at ' first to do well ; but, partly owing to the bad associates with whom he became connected, and partly to the unfitness of his wife to play the hostess, the business soon fell off. While they lived together here, Mrs. Manning, on one occasion, left her husband, pretending that she had to go to the Continent to receive some money. She remained absent about five weeks without communicating with her husband, and Manning findingthe business of his house falling off, made over" the lease to another party, and left Taunton. At length, Mrs. Manning returned and presented herself at her former house, and was of course refused admission. She then hastened to London, and found her husband living with his brother in Francis street, Newington. She remained with him only a short time and then decamped again, and was at length discovered living with O'Connor, a second time their differences were healed, and they next appeared as the host and hostess of the Old King John's Head, in the Emgsland road, where tfoeyVppeared only a very short period, and on leaving Kingsland they went to live at Minver ' Place, the scene of their diabolical crime. The register book of the marriages of the parish of St. James, Westminster, shows that the marriage of the guilty parties was by licence, and that it took place on the 27th of May last, at the parish church, Manning being described as a railway clerk, and his wife (then Maria de Roux) as daughter of David de Roux, postmaster, in Geneva; the officiating minister being the Rev. T. Beames, the curate ; and the attesting witnesses, Jean Etienne Beauvais and Louisa Sabanson .