EXTRAORDINARY CHARGE.

Temuka Leader, Issue 933, 1 April 1882, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY CHARGE.

It is not open that a clergyman is .charged with setting his own church on fire. Thai accusation has just been made against the Rev. George Sanger, Vicar of Carlton, in Yorkshire, and dismissed by the magistrates after three days’ hearing. There was no necessity of any evidence in Mr Sanger’s defence, and the Bench, after having deliberated ten minutes, declared that the prima facie evidence was not strong enough to sustain the charge. Apparently (says the Home News) it arose out of the personal enmity which Mr Sanger had excited in his parish. His life was not irreproachable ; his housekeeper was his mistress before she became his wife ; and there was also another young lady in the case. As regards the particular charge of arson the chief evidence against Mr Sanger was that he possessed one of the only two sets of keys to the #hurch, the sexten having the other. The sexton’s keys had not been used, and after the fire both doors were found to be locked, Mr Sanger, however, did something towards' justifying the suspicion excited against him by decamping from his parish immediately after the fire, in the company of his housekeeper and niece, and taking lodgings as a mechanic, under a false name, in Lambeth. He explained that he did this to escape the domestic scandal which his way of life had aroused, tie certainly can have no motive in destroying the church, to whose restoration he largely contributed out of his own means,