MURDER OF A WHOLE FAMILY.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 823, 10 June 1871, Page 3

MURDER OF A WHOLE FAMILY.

A man named Dakinghas murdered his family at Stono Fort, Illinois, America. A correspondent of the Carbondale " New Era" writes on April 6th, describing the sceno at the hut of tho murdered family : Lying diagonally across some old quilts and blankets stretched upon a rude frame-work in a corner to the right band as yon enter tho door was the body of a woman of, apparently thirty-four or thirty-five, with her throat cut and hacked in a fearful manner, the jugular veins, windpipo, arteries, everything being severtd, and the head only held to the trunk by the vertebra). There was a deep incision across the right hand, as though a sharpe knife had been suddenly drawn through the clenched fist. Several deep and long cuts were upon her shoulders and breast. Near tho fireplace, with her head partly in an old skillet, lay a fairhaired little girl of some ten or twelve years of age, with her throat cut from ear to ear. In tho corner farthest from the door and on the same side of the room where the woman was lying, on a pallet evidently where the children slept of nights, lay the bodies of two little boys, one across the other, aged respectively about seven and five, both with their throats cut. On the floor near, and partly under the bed where the woman lay, was the body of another girl apparently not more than three years old, hear hed nearlysevered from her body. From indications t!ie woman's struggle for life must have been protracted and furious, until she succumbed from loss of blood or a disabling stroke from the instrument of slaughter. A trail of blood leading in a north-easterly direction from the house, pointed out the course of the murderer's flight. Pursuing parties started on the trail, but did not proceed more than one hundred yards before they came upon the body of an infant of not more that a year old, lying partially clasped by the left hand of a man, it having shared the fate of its mother, brothers and sisters. The man who was no other than Dakins, was also dead, with a gaping wound across his throat. His blood-stained shirt, pants, and a razor lying near the body, where it must have fallen from his hand the moment after inflicting the fatal wound upon his throat, proclaimed him to be the author of the wholesale butchery of his family. As the man died and left no sign, the causes that led to the commission of the murders oan only be conjectured.

The origin of the word " larrikin" as explained by Mr "Whiteman in the Assembly on Tuesday night, is certainly plausible, and perhaps for want of a better definition may be accepted as the true etymology. Some months ago Constable Dalton, an active member of the police force, and one who is particularly noticeable for the interest shown by him in our street " arabs" arrested one of them for some offence that shocked the worthy constable's ideas of propriety, and took him before the police magistrate. The charge alleged against the lad was that he, wih other boys, had been "larking" in the streets ; but the constable who hails from the Emerald Isle and who speaks the brogue with all the fullness of a native, described the offence as that of "larrakin," and the Press seizing upon the word, adopted it as characteristic of the offences which the youthful of the colony are so prone to indulge in, and which the Legislature proposes to suppress by resorting to whipping. Exercise your Faculties. What stubbing, ploughing, digging, and harrowing is to land, thinking, reflecting, and examining is to the mind. Self Love.—" Whenever," said Madame de Stael, " I see Mr S., I feel the same pleasure that I receive from looking at a fond couple, be and his self-love live so happily together." Quilp, who has been hitherto been an Universalist, now believes that there are two things destined to be entirely lost—his umbrella and the man who stole it. Mary Powell, in her lecture on the Indians, says she has seen 200 Indian babes together, and not a squall from one of them. A wise master or mistress will not, on light provocation, fall out with a good servant; but the difficulty is to fall in with one now-a-days. It is human to err, but devilish to brag on it.