AMERICA.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 3999, 16 June 1870, Page 4

AMERICA.

APPALLING CATASTROPHE.— 6O PERSONS KILLED AND 125 WOUNDED. ', A deeadfi;l catastrophe occurred at Rich' mond, at the Capitol, on April 27. 'An immense crowd of 'persons had assembled to hear a decision by the State Court of Appeals. In a Court-room, twenty-five feet by twenty feet, were hundreds of people. The entrance to the Court-room was from a balconied gallery in the upper storey, over the Washington moument, on the lower floor, and above was a skylight in the roof, which admitted the light. This balcony oi gallery was also filled with people who could not gain admittance ' to the Court-room. Suddenly a report as of a smothered gun under the floor was heard, followed immediately by another similar report ; and then came a crackling sound, as of small timbers breaking, and the floor was felt giving way in the centre of the room. Down went the floor with a terrific crash, with its living, breathing, frightened human freight, dragging with it the gallery and its living mass ; and down they went a distance of nearly twenuy-five feet to the floor of the House of Delegates. Then, with the descending mass, the cailing above (which was somehow attached to the gallery also) came down with another fearful crash, smothering and crushing the living and struggling mass of victims beneath. Soon after, the ladders and other aid arrived, when the work of rescue was vigorously commenced. Up to the present, the list of dead numbers 60, and the wounded, as far as ascertained, number 135 — a large majority of the number of persons the Courtroom was capable of containing. Telegrams of sympathy and offering aid for the afflicted are coming in from all parts of the country. A citizen of iNew York has given authority to Ja gentleman here to draw on him for l,ooodol. for the relief of the sufferers. A telegram from Alexandria announces the death from sorrow of Mrs. Brewis, the wife of oue of the victims, and another was driven insane.

WENDELL PHILLIPS ON NEWSPAPERS. There is a newspaper. It is the New Torlc Herald — it panders to every low vice. You will exclaim against it, but yon waste your words. The merchant says, " The best news on stocks I can get is here ; the keenest insight I can get into politics is here ; the most instinctive sagacity and judgment on American life is here j" so he swallows the immorality and buys the intelligence. Give me tea million of dollars, and let me countercheck the Herald by columns which no business man will dare to enter Wall - street without reading. And give me the Christian men of Wallstreet. One man knows railroads ; another man knows copper ; a third knows Nevada ; a fourth knows cotton ; and a fifth some other specialty ; each one indispensable in his own department. "Does he make 100,000 dollars by hoarding his sagacity, I will pay him I 200,000 dollars for putting it into my columns. I don't wish to abuse the Herald. I don't wish to abolish immoral papers by statute. I will provide you one so infinitely better if you will give me this 200,000,000 dollars of reserved Christendom. The Devil i pours out 200,000,000 dollars and gets it ; 1 you don't bid high enough ; it's a pity you I don't.

A WOMAN MURDERS HER FAMILY. | Mrs. Catherine Marsh, near Jeffcrsoustreet, killed her four young children, by cutting their throats, and cut her mother in such a manner that but slight hopes are entertained of her recovery. It appears that about four o'clock in the afternoon Mrs. Marsh prooeeded to Primary School, No. 13, on Jefferson-street, near Caroline, where her oldest child, named Jam°s, a bright boy of eight years of age, was at school. She took him from the school-room, it is said, against his wish, and, conducting him to a shed in the yar,d, cut his throat from ear to ear with a large butcher knife, which i she had previously borrowed from a neighbouring grocery store, on the pretence of desiring to cut meat. Leaving the child's body where she had slain it, Mrs. Marsh then proceeded to h.er home, with the knife reeking with the blood of her first-born concealed under her apron, where she found her mother, Mrs. Nellie Dwyer, aged fifty-three years, sitting at the front window sewing. She at once approached her, and with the same knife cut he? throat in such a terrible manner as to render it doubtful, in the opinion of the physicians, if she can recover. She then cut the throats of her three remaining children — William, aged six years ; Mary Jane, aged four years ; and George, aged two years. The heads of the children were neai-ly severed from the bodies. — Baltimore, Sun, April 22.

SANGUINARY SUICIDE. A shocking case of suicide was reported at the coroner's office yesterday morning. On receiving the notice yesterday, Coroner's Clerk OBrien repaired to fche dwelling-house, 127, Turk-street, near Jones, and found that a woman named Annie Schneider had terminated her existence during the night in a frightful manner. After reti rmg to her room last evening she had procured a razor, and made a deep incision in each wrist an inch and a half in length. She then came down to the foot of the stairs, laid herself on the floor, and bled to death. No unusual noise was heard about the premises during the night, and the first knowledge of the tragic affair was the discovery of the poor woman lying stiff and cold in a pool of blood. Mrs. Schneider was a widow, and has been crazy for the last three years, but never attempted any died of violence beEore.

ROBBERY OF 60,000 DOLLARS FROM A BANK. On April 18 it was discovered that the banking-house of Scott, Williams, and Co., in Columbia, had been entered by burglars. The vault door and inner safe were drilled and blown open. A man, named Gage, was found locked in a closet of the bank. He claimed to have been locked in while drunk, and knows nothing of the robbery. The burglars pillaged the boxes of special depositors of bonds, gold, currency, jewellery, and valuable papers, amounting to between 50,000 dollars and 60,000 dollars. Several thousand dollars in specie on special deposit is included in the loss. The bank loses not more than 20,000 s dollars. The balance is divided among private individuals. The burglars left behind them all their took and half a keg of powder.

LEG-AL FIGHT OVER A DEAD BODY. Theresa Beck, an old lady of this city, died Saturday morm'ng at the residence of her bister, on Superior-street, near Dodgestreet. The old lady, before she died, had requested of her relatives that she be buried by the side of her husband and child in Woodland Cemetery. Saturday morning, after her death, her son-in-law, Mr. John Saver, went to the residence of M. Simon, where the body was lying, and demanded the body,, in order to fulfil her last request. But M, Simon, being a Catholic, refused to ' give it up, saying that she should not be buried in a Protestant Cemetery as she requested. Whilst Mr. Saver was taking legal steps to get possession of the body, M. Simon and his Catholic friends had taken the body and placed the same in the vault of the Catholic Cemetery, on Kinsman-street, where the constable finally found it. It was taken from the Cathslic Cemetery and placed in the vault of Woodland Cemetery, and was interred on Sunday last. — Olevelmd Herald.

BOM ANTIO ELOPEMENT. About two years ago, in the pleasant town of Orange, N, J., in the employ of Elijah D. Burnet, a highly-respectable merchant, was a young man of rather pleasing exterior and address, named William Culbert. His occupation was that of coachman. . A daughter of his employer, Miss Annie Y. Burnet, then about in her fourteenth or fifteenth year, but large and womanly for her age, took ade cided liking for* the good-looking coachman, which penchanjfc, after some time, ripened into genuine 'affection.,' In the meanwhile the attachment was jealously guarded by the loversj so that the parents of the girl "never dreamed of ;thefmatter. v Some business ;re^ verses necessitated the partiaijbreakingup of Mr. Burnet's domestic establishment,- and

'young Culbert left, as Ma employer thought, -for. parts" unknown.' By means only known to lovers under similar circumstances, Miss Burnet and young Culbert managed to keep 'tip their intimacy, and to meet occasionally. Finally, the young lady found it difficult to conceal the affair, and, between anxiety on the one hand and true love on the oiher, she managed to world herself into a severe illness. After some time she imparted the secret to her physician, who in turn informed the parents, who, as might be expected*' tried to disabuse the girl of her notion, but to no purpose. As to a marriage with Culbert they would not listen to such a thing. The upshot was that within a few weeks since Miss Annie surreptitiously left home, and, in company with her lover, drove off to Montelair, where they were indissolubly tied in the bonds of holy matrimony by the Rev. T. L. Maxwell. The indignant parents were at first disposed to give the young people the cold shoulder, but finding that William was really far above his former position, and about to take a responsible situation in a Newark dry-goods house, they relented, and now perfect harmony reigns in the Burnet and Culbert domestic circles.

A SAD MISTAKE. Mr. Hertzog, living near Hawesville, Ky., recently purchased a quantity of arsenic for the purpose of poisoning rats. He was imprudent enough, to place it in a bottle in a cupboard, near another bottle containing bread soda. The next day Mrs. Hertzog went to the cupboard to get some soda to mixinto pie-crust. She either did not kno w the arsenic was in the cupboard, or had forgotten about it. At any rate, she made the mistake of taking the arsenic and mixing it in her pie crust, instead of the soda. On the same evening one of the pies she had baked was eaten for supper. The family consisted of five persons. One s of the children, a boy, was absent during the meal. The other four, however, partook of the poisoned pie, and by the next morning every one of them was dead.

PRIZE-FIGHTERS IN TROUBLE. A crowd of roughs went to Connecticut yesterday, to witness a prize-fight between Edward Touhey and James Kerrigan, who were matched two or three months ago to fight for 1,000 dollars a-side. The fight and the fighters came to grief. One party embarked on a steamboat and went by water. The head-winds were too innch for her, and she did not reach New Haven in time ; but when she did tie up at the dock, she was seized for not having proper papers. The party that went with the other bruiser were on hand at the proper time, but, unfortunately for their day's sport, the police and the military of New Haven came down upon them, and took about a hundred of the warriors, who were under the necessity of going to gaol.

REMARKABLE DISCOVERY. Many of the residents of South Boston have often admired that grand old English elm which has stood, no one knows how long, on the vacant lot of the Bird estate, on Fourth-street, just east of Dorchester-street, and nearly opposite the stable of Wm. P. Pierce. Last Thursday the vandal axe commenced its work, and now nothing is left but the prostrate trunk. The tree was over sixty feet high, and very wide-spreading, and the trunk was eighteen feet in circumference at the ground. On cuLting the trunk close to the ground, quite a number of nails were found all grown over in the wood, and about six inches from, the bark was also found an imbedded stone of the size of a hen's egg. When the parts had been separated the workmen were surprised to find that the obstacle was an iron tube (supposed to be a gun barrel), which was solidly imbedded longitudinally in the centre of the trunk. The tube was closely filled with solid wood. The question to be solved is, when and how this tube or barrel became joined to the tree. — Boston Traveller.