THE GHASTLIEST MURDER ON RECORD.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2294, 17 December 1891, Page 4

THE GHASTLIEST MURDER ON RECORD.

A cablegram some time ago informed us that two children murdered another child for his clothes. The following is the Pall Mall Gazette account of it :

De Quincey’s essay on “ Murder Considered as a Fine Art ” is one of the grimmest pieces of writing in our languageBut it lacked one gruesome touch. It knew nothing of the story which was partly told at a Liverpool inquest yesterday .(September 23) —the story of the death of a child called David Eccles, for whose murder two other children have been committed to take their trial at the assizes.; We doubt if the rest of the civilised world any more than De Quincey has ever been confronted with a passage quite so hideously black. What is it in the dreary annals of murder—in the study of that half-explored region of human nature “ where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden-eyed despairs ” what is it that makes one crime stand out among its fellows ? Is it inadequacy of motive ? Pitiful inadequacy of motive is here. Cold savage deliberation in compassing the crime—horror and cruelty in the circumstances of its accomplishment! Such deliberation, such cruelty were never more revoltingly displayed than here But over and above all this, as the last bid for ghastly pre-eminence, which seems to put this Liverpool murder in a class by itself, there is one circumstance which may be told in a sentence. Murdered and murderers all three were infants. The wretched child who was butchered was aged eight. The wretcheder children who butchered him were aged, one eight also, and the other nine.

Shortly, the facts are these. During [ the dinner hour on Tuesday, the Bth inst. some boys were playing football upon a piece of waste land bordering upon Stanley-street, Liverpool. The bad was kicked over a hoarding which separates the waste land from the foundations of a large unfinished building in Victoria street. Some of the boys climbed over the hoarding to recover the bad. In their 1 search in the skeleton building they found the body of a boy, stripped quite nakpd, lying at the bottom of an excavation about 15ft below the ground level. The body lay in about eight or ten inches of rain water. The body turned out to be that of David Dawson Eccles, son of an iron-dresser. On the 11th the police sought out two boys named Sam Crawford and Robert Shearon, aged respectively 6 and 8 years. Upon being arrested each boy made a statement incriminating himself and his companion, a statement so circumstantial and so consistent that the police had no option but to charge these two chddren with causing the death of the third. According to the statement of those who were present, the callous indifference which the boys showed in telling their story was almost as horrible as the details of the story itself. This —for the pair corroborate each other in all important details—runs as follows:—The boy Shearon was in the habit of playing the truant and deserting his home, such as it was, at night. To stop this his mother one evening had taken away such clothes as he had and held them in her own keeping. Not to be beaten the boy got hold of an old piece of sacking, with which he covered his nakedness and ran out. Next morning he and the other boy put their heads together and decided to entice the first decently-dressed lad they could find to the place where the crime was afterwards committed, there to rob him of his clothes. At about 2 p.m. on Monday, Shearon met Eccles, whom he had never seen before, in Great Charlotte-street, and took him oft’ to play about with Crawford for some time. They induced Eccles to come with them to “ the rafts ” as they temptingly described the place which has been described already. With some difficulty they got the boy over the hoarding It was then seven in the evening. They were delayed in the execution of their project by the fact that a few boys were playing about the place. The two young murderers, however, waited patiently till the others left and contrived to make Eccles stay behind. They then began operations. First they tried to induce Eccles to walk along an iron girder. Eccles said he was afraid, and they then pushed him in. He fell 12ft into about a foot of water in which he struggled—no doubt the child was bruised and hurt. I They then cruelly helped him out, stripped I him of his clothes, and—pushed him in again from the same height. From the height of the drop and the description of the place one might imagine that two such falls would have proved fatal to the child of eight, and that the purpose on which the two little ruffians were set would have been accomplished without further cruelty. But their victim seems to have tried once more to struggle out. And that brings us to the most horrible, the most incredibly horrible—part of the story. These two little fiends actually helped the child out again then dragged him to a still higher part of the masonry and flung him over a third time. This time he lay as he fell. And then says Shearon, Crawford climbed down and knelt upon the victim’s head,keeping it under water till both felt secure of having stamped out the last spark of life. Both then stayed and watched the body until 9 p.m. “to see if he moved.” They might have spared themselves so much. He never moved again. Then they divided the spoils, calmly dried their wet clothes at a street brazier, and Shearon, at least, went home. What can be said on such a “(human document ”as this 1 Nothing that could add one touch to the pity and terror of it; nothing that we can think of to throw one ray of light into the impenetrable mysteiy of the problems which it suggests.