CRIME.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3367, 9 December 1871, Page 3

CRIME.

At the conclusion of the Bathurst criminal sittings recently, his Honor Judge Hargrave read the following address: — "Gentlemen of the jury, — Before I discharge you from further attendance at these assizes, it is my most painful duty to make a few .remarks upon the grievous catalogue of heinous crimes brought under our notice during the last nine days. Tho list of convictions at these assizes is as follows: — Alexander Bell, assault on a girl under ten years of age, with intent, &c. ; seven years on the roads. William Ashmore, attempt at rape ; two years with hard labor. John Morris, manslaughter; six months' imprisonment, h.ird labor, Bathurst. R. Jones, rape ; death. Ellen Ryan, administering poison with intent to do grievous bodily harm ; five years' hard labor. W. Smith, shooting with intent ; seven years on the roads. Ah Kew, housebreaking ; seven years on the roads. J. W. Bell, wounding with intent to murder ; death. Mary Jane Devlin, murder; death. W. Bentley, cattlestealing ; seven years' hard labor on the roads. W. Hartley, alias Cox, murder ; death. Besides these conviction? there are at least four proved murders remaining unpunished — viz.: first, the murder of the white man,whose body was discovered in Marra Creek in March of this year ; and the threefold murder of Mr Kane, aged 73, and his unoffending wife, aged 73, with their daughter, Margaret Martin, at the Forest, in January, 1871. In this last most cruel murder, unless the murderer be brought to justice, there can be little doubt in my mind that further murders of this vindictive class will be perpetrated in the Forest district. There is also a postponed case of rape and one of murder. Gentleman, it is impossible to dismiss you from these assizes without asking myself how such an appalling catalogue of exclusively henious offences for trial at a single half-yearly assize can have arisen among a comparatively small and dispersed population, certainly not 50,000 souls, or at most 60,000 in the whole. There have been no recent seditions or insurrectionary outbreaks, no recent agrarian disturbances, no general or even partial poverty — from which this Bathurst assize is to be distinguished from the other assizes in the colony. Gentlemen, I cannot answer this inquiry ; but it remains for you to consider, and for every inhabitant of this assize district to consider, whence has arisen the unfeeling disregard for human life, the fierce vindictiveness, the ferocious assaults upon women and female children, and the gross sensuality disclosed at the present assizes, not only in the offences themselves, but also in the surrounding circumstances of each particular case. I have now only to thank you for the unwearied attention and great acuteness with which you have discharged your duties as jurymen during these nine long days of our criminal sittings. For myself, as the judge of these sittings, my mind will always look back with ! horror upon the Bathurst Assizes of October, 1871."