THE LATE MYSTEEIOUS MURDER AT GLASGOW.

Wellington Independent, Volume XVII, Issue 1799, 2 December 1862, Page 4

THE LATE MYSTEEIOUS MURDER AT GLASGOW.

t A Scottish Court of Justice has recently been occupied %itb the trial of a remarkable case of inurder^ and the story has created an extraoriiipaij* sensation in the North. On July 7th a woman named Jessie Macpheison was found dead 1 on the floor of bar bed-room in a bouse at Glasgow. Her body was so shockingly mangled 1$ to mike it clear that tatirdei ; &ad been done, it was presently ascertained that she had Mot'' been' Been alive since the evening .of the Friday 'previous. Her capacity was tbat of a servant, and it was in the house of her master \hai she bad .thus met with her death. She appears to have been actually in the service of a son of an old gentleman named Fleming, but be was absent at the time, and his father alone "was in the house. When, therefore, the corpse %as discovered, and the deed of blood brought ib iligfff, : it was natural, anti indeed inevitable, that old Mr Fleming should be called to account for himself, and he was accordingly arrested, and examined after the Scottish method of proceduie. It appeared that lie was almost 90 -years pld— he gave his own age as 87— and there was consequently a strong improbability itf Ihb presumption that the crime could have beett ' the work of his hands., But it did hap J pen, 1 strange to say, that his uncommon Vigour of mind and body removed much of this incredibility. The judge himself, in summiDg Up, freely admitted that there was not really any incapacity on bis part, and although, therefore, the case still remained extraordinary, attd became daily 'more so as the prisoner's position was better: understood, he was, for a • Short time, the person most commonly connected With the offence in local reports. He i Wits' [oldj but he was not feeble ; there was no reason for bis committing such a crime, but he '/was in the house with the deceased, and so the Glasgow people scarcely knew what to think of the matter. ". ' .'But the reputation of the old man thus unfojtuoately situated was gradually in a great measure cleared. It was found that certain ' articles were missing from the bouse — some clothing belonging to the murdered womaD, and some plate belonging to the old man's son. This plate, it seemed, had been pawned in the cjtjy it was identified, and the pawnbroker ' testified that it was a woman who had pawned it. Here was a new light thrown on tbe case! Who ?' For some time that quesnot, be solved, but it, was presently xeported that the police were on her track, and that she had been taken. She proved to bo a omain Jessie M'Lauchian, and circumstances were soon discovered which connected her very closely with the ciime. In fact, it became evideut that she was either the actual murderess or was privy to the deed, nor was it long doubted which of these two assumptions was tbe more - probable. She had formerly lived in Mr. 'Fleming's service herself; she was still wellacquainted with him, and had been on intimate terms with the deceased woman. She knew all the ways of the house, and was in the habit ©f going there. She did go there on the night of Friday, the,4th July, and she did not return to her, own home till the of Saturday the slb; L Wherfshe returned she was not clad in the drqss wiijchsbe had worn on going out, JmMu a dress' which had belonged to Jessie "Macpheisou. Tbis dress she changed, when she got home, and took it to a dyer's to be

dyed. Her own dress, torn to shreds, but stained with blood, was found scattered in various fragments along some fields at Hamilton, 10 or 12 miles from Glasgow, and in those very fields she had been seen. When she left her home on Friday she took with her a bottle, and a similar bottle was in the house of murder Up to that Friday she had been in despetate want of money, but on Saturday she was in ' possession of cash for hey needs. All this evidence was very strong; but Jessie M'Lauchlan endeavored to elude its force by [ accusing old Mr. Fleming of the crime. She ] made a declaration before the trial, and she i made a statement at the trial itself. She ad- ] mitted that she had been pvesent in the house ( on the night of Friday, and that she bad a ' knowledge, though an. involuntary knowledge, ' of the murder. The actual deed she traced to ' the baud of the old man, and ascribed it to ' motives of ange* and feav together. .He had, ] she said, made unseemly propositions to the ' deceased woman, was afraid of her telling . against him, and had quarrelled with her. The end of it, according to her story, was that he fell upon her with a meat chopper and killed her, after which he sent the witness out with his son's plate that she might raise money upou it. The dresses of the deceased 1 , she said, had" been sent to her by the unfortunate woman herself the evening before her death. This story, howevev, did not. obtain much credit. It was not consistently told ; it did not agree with probabilities, and few people therefore were surprised when the announcement was made that old Mr. Fleming was liberated and Jessie M'Lauchlan committed to gaol. Last week .she was brought to trial, and it appears from the report that she was supplied with the means of making a most able defence. The questions raised were the same as before. What gave such a singularity to the case was that the accused was also an accuser. Her defence was the impeachment of another person. Ftom a certain complicity with the crime she could not pretend to clear herself, but she persisted to the last in maintaining not only that she was innocent, but that old Mr. Flem ing was guilty. Her statement was not without its points of speciousness. The old man had undoubtedly been in the house at the time of the murder, and it seemed strange enough, certainly, that he could have quietly put up, as he did, with the disappearance of his servant after Friday night. He said in tbe witnessbox, that on Saturday morning at 4 o'clock he heard several " squeels," as of a person in distress, and that lie thought the servant bnd some one in with her; but the noise ceasing, he had thereupon gone back to bed. When he got up for the day, although she did not make her appearance be raised no alarm ; on the contrary, when the milk-boy came, be himself answered the bell with promptitude, and said no milk w*s required. The boy insists that the chain" had to be taken off the door before it was opened, while the old man was veiy confused in his evidence on this point on cross-examination, and at first had stated that he was certain the chain was not on, and that the perpetrators had no doubt gone out by the front' door. Marks of blood were on two shirts belonging to old Fleming, which he found in the kitchen on Saturday, and himself put away ; there were marks of blood on the kitchen floor/which he alleges he did not see, and a portion of the floor was wet from recent washing on the Monday evening when the murder was discovered. But the jury thought that there was nothing in all this ir reconcilable with the innocence of an eccentric nonagenarian, . whereas there was very much which it was impossible to reconcile with the innocence pf bis accuser. But 20 minutes were taken for the consideration of the verdict. Jessie M'Lauchlan was found guilty of the murder, and the judge, Lord Deas, in passing sentence took occasion to say that Mr Fleming's character was free from suspicion or stain. " Since the conclusion of the trial," says the North British Daily Mail, " public opinion has swayed to and fro as regards the verdict given. The manner in which her l statement ' before sentence tallies with the evidence of the Crown has been generally remarked upon as favouring the idea that she had at last told the truth. A memorial to the Home Secretary asking for a commutation is being prepared, and a public meeting is spoken of with the view of a general request to the same effect to Sir George Grey." The ' Glasgow Morning Journal,' which warmly espouses the cause of Mrs. M'Lauchlan, says:— "No great public or national event could have produced for the time being greater or more universal excitement than that which prevailed throughout the city on Saturday arternoon. . From the opening of the trial on Wednesday all other topics were lost sight of, and the progress of the case was watched day after day with an attention that has been given to no criminal case, not even excepting the famous Madeline Smith trial. The ferment in the public mind reached the greatest pitch, when, with the issue of the trial, was made known the extraordinary statement read by the prisoner's counsel before the passing of the sentence. The scene in court whilst Mr. Clark read the paper was a striking one. The prisoner, stolid heretofore throughout her weary sitting, cried bitterly but silently, her grief seeming greatest wbeu the account of the last moments of the murdered woman was being read ; but on the conclusion of the statement becoming, whist Lord Deas told her, in harsh and unmerciful terms, her fixed doom, and his opinion of her story, once more composed, and wearing, indeed, an air stern even to defiance. The jury who nad just settled her fate seemed much more discomposed than before the reading of the statement; the faces of some of the gentlemen showing a great deal more alarm, indeed, than the prisoner herself did; while tbe feeling that prompts some to cry on hearing the death warrant of a fellow-- being pronounced seemed overcome by astonishment, one tender-hearted policeman, near the place where the prisoner sat, being the only person we saw shed tears. The aspect of the city at large seemed one of unusual agitation. Meanwhile the miserable woman, delivered over to the charge of Governor Slirlinjr, was at once lodged in tbe cell which had been prepared in case of an unfavorable verdict. Possessing rave strength of will, she has retained her self-com-mand since sentenced with the same outward quietude as heretofore, and has expressed her | innocence in strong terms several times. Whatever her hope of a respite may be, she does not express herself regarding it in any way, making the remark on one occasion that she wished her statement given to tbe public, not for her own sake, but that for the sake of her husband and child the. world might know she is not the deeply-stained crimiual she is couvicted of being, Her story finds many believers, and many more, | though not convinced, would yet give the unfortunate woman the due benefit of the ' douht as to the justice of the verdict."