Page:Medical jurisprudence (IA medicaljurisprud03pari).pdf/43

This page needs to be proofread.

All these circumstances combined, placed the matter beyond conjecture. He had evidently been strangled, probably at the spot where the glass fragments were found, which were undoubtedly the remains of his phial, broken during the scuffle; besides, it would appear that he had been dragged along the field from this spot to the opposite hedge, for marks denoting such an act were visible on the grass, and this received farther confirmation from the condition in which the shoes of the deceased were found. Who then committed the murder? From the circumstances of its having been perpetrated in a field containing several old mines, without any attempt on the part of the villain to avail himself of the advantage which these caverns would have afforded for the concealment of the dead body, the author was convinced that the perpetrator of the deed would be found in some stranger to the country, for such a one alone could be unacquainted with the mines to which we allude. The suggestion of this idea very naturally gave a direction to the line of inquiry. Were any suspicious strangers in Penzance or its neighbourhood? Had the deceased been seen in the society of any person unacquainted with the country? He had been seen, it was discovered, playing at cards in a public house with some of the privates of the artillery stationed in the Mount's Bay, amongst whom was a very powerful and athletic Irishman, of the name of Burns, who had lately landed, and immediately enlisted into the corps. Burns was accordingly arrested on suspicion, when the purse of the deceased containing thirty shillings was found on his person. He was, moreover, unable to shew where he was at the time the deceased left Penzance, in the evening; and he was subsequently recognised by two witnesses who had seen him accom-