[murder – Illawarra]

R. v. Lynch

Supreme Court of New South Wales

Burton J., 13 May 1841

Source: Sydney Herald, 14 May 1841[1]

LAW INTELLIGENCE.

SUPREME COURT - CRIMINAL SIDE.

            Thursday. – Before Mr. Justice Burton, and a common jury.

            Matthew Lynch, free by servitude, was indicted for the murder of Michael Sullivan, at Illawarra, in the month of July, 1840.

            The Attorney General gave an outline of the case, and called,

            Mr. Colin Stephenson, who deposed – I was superintendent to Mr. J. T. Hughes, at Illawarra, near Wollongong; I know the prisoner, he is a sawyer; I paid him some money in May, 1840; he had been working there for some months before; I paid him £32 odd; he had a mate named Stone; I made another contract with the prisoner and Sullivan, which ended on the 18th of July, when Lynch came to me on that day, being on Saturday, to get the sawn timber measured, when I told him that I could not measure it on that day, but would do so on Monday; on the Sunday Lynch took the overseer, Pearman, and had the work measured by him; I told Lynch I would have the timber measured over again on Monday, which was done by two men, named Wilkinson and Buckley; the prisoner came repeatedly to me on that day, pressing for the money, alleging that he was in a great hurry, being anxious to get to Sydney; he was then very clean, being dressed in white trowsers; he came in the forenoon, and also in the evening, just before sun-down, and I appointed to pay him on Tuesday morning, at nine o’clock; on Monday night, about seven o’clock, when walking in the avenue, I saw a blaze in the bush, in the direction of the hut, in which the prisoner and Sullivan lodged, and spoke to one of the servants about it, when he gave it as his opinion that it was a fire by the blacks; it burned very fierce for some time; I told him the blacks were not in that direction; on the Tuesday morning, about five o’clock, the prisoner came to me about the money, he had a scar on his forehead and another on his chin, which seemed to have been produced by violence; they had been washed; he then appeared very shabby, and had on blue trousers; I told him to go for Sullivan, and come at nine o’clock, and I would pay him; he went away, saying he would bring him; he came at the end of an hour without him, when I told him I would not pay him; he then went off and returned in the evening; my reason for not paying him was, that Sullivan had sent word to me, by three persons, that I was not to pay the prisoner, as he was afraid of his life; when he came at night I refused to pay him, and told him to go for Sullivan, who, he said, he believed was at the hut; I called Mr. Buckley to witness the settlement, and during the absence of the prisoner I placed the accounts on the table; we sat down about 14 minutes, when the prisoner returned and roared out he had been robbed; I asked of how much, and he said of £37; I asked where it had been taken from him, when he said Sullivan had taken it and his white trowsers, and had bolted; I said it was a strange thing that Sullivan should do so, as he had £24 coming to him, and refused to pay him till Sullivan was produced; he never gave me to understand before that, he had £37, or indeed any money; he had no means of making money, and I had paid him some money before in May; I am convinced that he had not time to be at the hut during the time he was away, as it wants only about a chain and a half of being a mile distant from my house; I then believed he had been robbed, and directed him to go to Captain Collins and get a warrant against Sullivan; he returned on the Wednesday morning with a constable and told me he had got a warrant; I asked the constable if he had a warrant, and he told me he had, but had not looked for Sullivan, as he did not know where he was to be found; we then went out and saw McQuilty and a number of other persons coming to the house when McQuilty cried out to Costillo, the constable, handcuff the scoundrel, he has murdered Sullivan, which was done; I had seen Sullivan a few days before alive and well; I went to the hut on Wednesday or Thursday, and saw part of the hut burned down, and on the next Sunday we found a quantity of ashes about ten yards distant from the hut, and they were covered with branches of trees, and a number of bones were mixed with the ashes; we had before searched the water-holes for the body; I cannot identify the bones; they were found by a man of the name of Doyle and his wife; I saw them in Doyle’s house; I saw the axe produced in front of the hut, the handle had been burned out of it, and the iron must have gone through the action of fire; on the following Tuesday we found the prisoner’s luggage at a person’s house of the name of Barratt, and in it found a pair of white trousers with marks of blood on them; these are the trousers; the marks are still visible on the front of them; they are of the same description as those worn by the prisoner on the 18th of July; I told him, when he reported the robbery, that it was very strange that he should remove all his things to Barratt’s, and leave the trousers with the money in the hut; when the axe was found, it appeared to have had blood on it; there were two pieces of bark in the hut, on which there were marks of blood [the sheets of bark were produced in court, and the marks pointed out]; they were the sheets on which Sullivan had been accustomed to sleep; they were first seen by me on the Sunday, when I went to the hut; the marks of the blood were then quite fresh; the prisoner came early on the Tuesday morning for the money, and the steamer left for Sydney between three and four in the afternoon.

            Cross-examined by the prisoner. – I met you coming out of my own house; the blacksmith sets to work at six in the morning; it was daylight, but the sun was not up; it was a very bad day; I take breakfast about nine-o’clock; I did not take breakfast for some hours after I saw you; I cannot swear that you were with me from nine to eleven; I do not recollect promising to write to Mr. Hughes to give you a clearing lease; the timber was twice measured, there was about thirty superficial feet of difference between the two measurements; I do not recollect what was the measurement; the axe was not found in the blacksmith’s hut; I saw it at the hut first, and afterwards at the blacksmith’s; I am not certain that I saw it at the hut, but my impression is that I saw it at the hut; I do not know how many days it was at the blacksmith’s shop; I never made any arrangements to defraud Mr. Hughes of 4,000 feet, and to get £10 for it; if you had offered me five millions of money I would still have charged you with the murder; you took the contract from me with Sullivan, and I thought he had as much right to half the money, as he was sawing with you; when the contract was made you engaged to pay off part of Sullivan’s debt, which you did; I do not know how much timber you cut with the woman, but the money I paid you in May, was £32 11s. 8d., and on the 18th of April I paid you £5; the £32 11s. 8d., was on your own account, and you was to pay your comrades yourself; I do not know what part of it Sullivan was to receive; I do not recollect what you said to me at the blacksmith’s shop; I believe Sullivan was sick, and had been bled by the doctor; I do not recollect that he was bit by my dog; Pearman was not the party to measure the timber; I never knew that McQuilty made you drunk on the Monday night, in order that he and Sullivan might rob you; I did not understand that it was to McQuilty’s hut but your own gunyah that you went to for Sullivan on Tuesday evening; you went in the direction of your hut, that of McQuilty was in a different direction; I thought that you had been robbed; I believe on oath that Sullivan is dead, he being a-missing; it was not a conspiracy against you on the part of those who found the bones; there was no quarrel between you and them, and you were always a quiet and peaceable person. There was a heavy rain on Tuesday night; it was on Monday night I saw the fire in the direction of the hut; when I saw the hut on Wednesday, there was no fire in it; I went for Pearman from the bush on Monday afternoon; I told you on Monday to bring Sullivan; I know he got in debt to me for rations and I told you I would keep Sullivan’s debt off the first contract; Sullivan wrought for half the last contract; I do not know that you had Sullivan and Stone hired as labourers for half your earnings; you went to be paid the £48.

            The Court remarked that it was a very improper thing not to have paid the prisoner his share of the money.

            The witness stated that after the prisoner was in custody it was discovered that the timber was made up by plank ends being put at the extremities of the heaps, so that it measured between eight and nine thousand feet more than it really contained, and that he prisoner gave information of the deceit after he was in custody for the murder.

            The cross examination by the prisoner resumed – I never gave away your blankets, and all your things are in the store; I think it is blood that is on the trowsers; I have cut myself when shaving, and have seen people tear themselves by the briars; I cannot say if the blood on the bark is bullock’s blood, or blood from the swelling in Sullivan’s groin, but I know that if Sullivan was bled it was not in that hut; I had seen the hut before Sullivan was missing; and after that I went there to see the timber; the blacksmith told me the axe had been left at his shop in the same stated that is now in.

            By the Court – I did not go to the hut on suspicion of the murder having been committed there. I went to see the timber; but afterwards a number of us went to the hut to search for the body, when one present showed the bark on which Sullivan used to lie; there were two sleeping places in the hut formed of pieces of stick; the stains were dry, but brighter than at present; I do not know that water will stain bark, I have not noticed it; there were no bed-clothes on the bed; I did not observe any stains on the bark in the other bed; the bones and ashes were completely concealed from the eye by the branches of trees, which had not been newly cut; there were a great quantity of branches lying about; we saw no traces of the ashes having been carried to where they were found, nor was there any evidence of a fire having been at the spot where the ashes were found; there were very few ashes in the fire-place.

            Cross-examined by the prisoner – The blacks were not in the direction of the hut on the Monday of the fire; they were in another place a mile distant from the hut.

            By a Juror – I have been three years in the country; on the Tuesday morning, when the prisoner came to me, it was light, but the sun was not up; I think it was between five and six in the morning; McQuilty’s hut is in a different direction from the prisoner’s hut; I do not know that tea will stain bark.

            Charles Doyle deposed – I agreed to grow tobacco with the last witness; I knew the prisoner as a sawyer, and Sullivan who was his mate. I was with McQuilty when the prisoner was taken into custody; I went to the hut on Wednesday, after dinner, but we found nothing on that day, except that the fire-place had been burned down; a number of us went again on the Sunday, when we found a fire made up not far from the hut, which had not been lighted up; we went there again after dinner, and, on removing some straw from the bark where Sullivan had slept, found stains of blood on it; on the way home we came on the bones and ashes; they were picked up; they were given to Dr. O’Brien; some bones were afterwards found at the saw-pit, where the prisoner and Sullivan worked; I saw Sullivan about a month before he was missing.

            Cross-examined by the prisoner – I only think that it is blood that is on the bank; I cannot swear that the bones are human; I did not know that you had any money; I do not know what master you work for; I never got blood nor fat from this last witness; I never got a farthing from any one to come here and prosecute you; I do not know how many men McQuilty had taken with him to search for the body; there might have been thirty persons there, including the blacks, to whom the white people offered to make up £5 if they could find the body; they searched for two days, and then gave it up.

            By the Court – When the bones were found, there was a wedge of an axe found among them; I was not intimate with Sullivan; when I saw him last he had on a pea jacket.

            Francis McQuilty deposed.  I am a carpenter living at Illawarra; I was told by Sullivan that he was afraid of the prisoner, who had chased him with a knife, and was requested by Sullivan to make the first witness aware that part of the money belonged to Sullivan; I told Mr. Stephenson, who said he would take care that Sullivan should have part of the money; I recollect being sent with Buckley to measure the sawed stuff cut by the prisoner and Sullivan; they were both present, and appeared to be on friendly terms; I had opportunities of knowing the prisoner’s money affairs; I know that he was arrested for £9 or £10 in May last, in consequence of a Court of Requests judgment; he also paid Mr. Barratt between six and seven pounds for rations; he likewise compromised another case for a pound; and he paid me £4 14s. 6d. out of the proceeds of his first contract; he told me that he had spent £4 in treating a woman and her friends at Wollongong; he was not able to meet the Court of Requests’ judgment, as he told me had a lump of a waddy in his hut to meet the constable; I never saw Sullivan after the measuring of the timber; he had on a pea jacket, and a very bad pair of shoes; on the morning of Wednesday, Mr. Hughes’s store-keeper told me that the prisoner had murdered Sullivan, and that the prisoner pretended that Sullivan had robbed him; I and about twenty others made a search for the body, but did not find it; on the Sunday after we went to the hut, and then saw the pieces of bark now in court, with marks on it, which I solemnly swear to have had the appearance of blood; I have seen an axe at the hut, and know it, as I once borrowed it; this is the axe; I next saw it at the blacksmith’s; the prisoner and Sullivan both promised to call on me; the prisoner did so, but I never saw Sullivan after, although all his best clothes were at my house, and he told me he wanted to go to Jamberoo for a pair of shoes, as wheat he had were very bad; he proposed taking his breakfast with me at my house on Tuesday; he had mere rags of clothes on when I saw him, and all his other good clothes were at my house; on the Wednesday a number of us went to the prisoner’s hut; and while we were there the prisoner came; he appeared very much surprised at seeing so many of us there; after consulting the others, we followed him to Mr. Stephenson’s and I gave him into custody; he then had a cut or bruise over his eye, which had been bleeding; I asked him how he got it and he said it was done by the branches when going to Jamberoo; I afterwards found some bones in a sawpit, which I put into the bag, I now produce; the wedge of the axe is among the ashes; I also found this night-cap concealed about three yards from where the bones were found; it was concealed under some offal timber; it was damp and had marks of blood on it; I see them yet, but they were much brighter then than they are now; I squeezed something like blood out of it; when the prisoner was taken he said to me, “Ye have made away with the man, and have taken his money;” before that he had got a warrant for Sullivan; the prisoner told me he had some money in the Bank, and also that he had some mares up the country.

            Cross-examined by the prisoner – I believe Sullivan is dead, and that you murdered and burned his body; I cannot say if the marks on the bark are marks of bullock’s blood, or is the blood of a human being; I swear it is not wine; I cannot swear that the bones are part of Sullivan; I remember that Sullivan was bled at another hut; it was outside the hut he was bled; he was sitting on a tree, and the blood ran on the ground; I cannot say how much timber you cut with my brother-in-law, but I know that you cheated him of £12 or £14; I know that you cut with him about two years ago, and that you cut £5 worth of stuff for Father Rigney also about two years ago; there were some dogs with us looking for the body, and a cake of blood was found by one of the dogs in front of the hut; this was got on the first or second day of the search for the body; the first information that we got of the body having been burned was from the blacks, who brought some clay from the fireplace, and some small bones, and told us that white man’s fat was in the clay, and that the bones were those of a white man; we also found a fire prepared for lighting in an apple-tree; on the Monday night after I had measured the timber Sullivan left my house about sundown; I gave neither you nor Sullivan any rum that night; I positively swear that I do not believe that you had £37, as you were not a sawyer, but lived by taking in those who employed you; I never sold grog; if you had given me £1000 I would have given you in charge as a murderer; I have been in this Colony since 1816; I have since my arrival measured a great deal of timber, but never saw such a fraud committed as was done by you, as you made up ten thousand feet, so as to make it measure twenty thousand.

            Examined by the Court – I was not privy to the fraud committed by the prisoner and his mate; I do not believe that any one knew of it but Lynch and Sullivan.

            By the Attorney-General – I do not recollect whether the prisoner was at my house on the Tuesday after I had measured the timber, nor did my wife tell me he had been there.

            By the prisoner – You might have been at the house on Tuesday night.

            John Evans deposed – I have known the prisoner before; I met him about the 21st of July, when I was on my way from Jamberoo, with a man named Michael Irwin; the prisoner asked where we came from, and on answering him, he enquired if we had seen a man named Sullivan; we told him we had not; he seemed to doubt our word, and told us that Sullivan had robbed him of £36 or £37; I said it was a hard case for a working man to be robbed of his earnings; he appeared to doubt our not having seen Sullivan; on which Irwin fell on his knees and swore that he had not seen him; the prisoner then said that he was convinced that we had not seen him, and if Sullivan would return his money he would not hurt a hair of his head; we then parted, but before we did so, I asked him where he kept his money, when he said it was kept in his trouser’s pocket which he sometimes flung over the door, and at other times on his berth; I afterwards went into an acquaintance’s house, who told me that Lynch had been taken into custody on a charge of having murdered Sullivan; I afterwards saw the prisoner in gaol, but he said nothing to me about the affair.

            Mr. John Pearman proved that the timber had been falsely stacked by the prisoner and his mate, which was the cause of the witness returning the total contents as being double what it actually was; and he believed any other person might have been deceived by the mode in which the timber was stacked.

            William Buckley, carpenter, corroborated the last witness as to the measurement, and also proved the finding of the burnt bones in the saw-pit, where they had been washed up by the rain.

            Charles McKenzie deposed, that he visited the saw-pit in the beginning of November last, and saw the bones produced in Court, which had been burnt; they had been covered with saw-dust, which had been washed of by the rain.

            Thomas Fowler, keeper of The Wollongong watch-house, where the prisoner was confined, deposed, that a person of the name of Jack Connor called and wished to see the prisoner, as being a shipmate of his; the prisoner at first refused to see him, but afterwards said he had sent for him to make enquiry of him if he had seen Sullivan at Dapto, when he (Connor) said he had not.

            Captain Patrick Plunkett, Police Magistrate of Wollongong, deposed to visiting the hut after Sullivan was missing; that he ordered the hut to be taken down, and then saw the marks of blood on it; there were also marks of congealed blood about the fire-place; when he spoke to the prisoner about Sullivan, he told him that Sullivan had robbed him, and gone over the mountain road to Campbelltown; word was sent there, but no account of a man answering Sullivan’s description was obtained; he also proved that part of the bones in Court had been brought to him by Doyle and several others, and among these he recognised one bone as being the cap of the knee of a human being.

            In cross-examination by the prisoner, this witness deposed that a man of the name of Larkin had been subpoenaed as a witness for the prisoner, who had afterwards told the witness that he knew nothing of the affair, on which he told him that under these circumstances it was optioned for him to attend, and he had not come to Sydney with the other witnesses.

            Dr. Bartholomew O’Brien, of Wollongong, proved that he had received some bones from Doyle which were produced in Court, that one of them is a fragment of a bone of the foot of a human being, it had a particular articulating surface, and there is no bone in any animal like it; there was also corroborative evidence obtained from calcining another bone of the same description, which on being burned assumed exactly the same appearance as the bone found by Doyle; there was also another fragment of a bone received from Doyle, which, from its being a segment of much larger curvature than the bones of the cranium of any other animal, was evidently a portion of the cranium of a human being; he also recognized it as a bone belonging to an adult person by the conformation of its sutures; this fragment had been compared with the craniums of the horse, the ox, the pig, the dog, the cat, and such other animals as were likely to have been about the place where it was found, but it was different from all of them, except that of an adult person, with which it agreed exactly; there was also a portion of the knee pan almost complete, there were several other bones found, which were evidently portions of the vertebrae of the back, but whether of a person or an animal from their being so broken, it was impossible to discover; the whole bones had been subjected to the action of fire, but the knee pan less than the others; in his opinion they had been subjected to fire shortly before they were given him for examination.

            Examined by the Judge – It was not possible to ascertain the age or sex of the person of whose body the bones had formed a part, neither could he say whether the bones had belonged to a black or a white person.

            The witness Fowler was recalled by the prisoner – He recollected that after the prisoner had been in custody, he mentioned in the watch-house that the bones found were those of a black gin.

            Dr. Harnett examined the fragments of the bones and identified the knee-pan, the bone of the foot, a portion of a skull, and selected two bones as being those belonging to the fingers of an adult; but had seen some of the bones of animals among the fragments, particularly some of the teeth of an animal of the cow kind.

            Doyle was recalled – Had found some buttons among the bones similar to those produced in Court, but whether those he saw were them or not he could not swear.

            Trooper Kershaw, of the Mounted Police, proved having been sent to Campbelltown to search for Sullivan with a warrant about the 21st of the month; but although he inquired all along the road he heard nothing of him.

            This closed the case for the Crown.

            In defence the prisoner asserted that the hut had been robbed by Sullivan in his absence, who had left the place, and that it was a case of spite, on the part of the neighbours, who had got up the charge against him in revenge for not giving £20 to Stephenson and McQuilty, to conceal the fraud about the measurement of the timber; he was of opinion that Sullivan was alive, and that the witnesses knew where he was; he had subpoenaed two witnesses, but they had not attended.

            His Honor recalled Doyle, who informed him that the bones were found in fresh ashes, which had been rained on, but had not been thoroughly penetrated by it.

            In putting the case to the jury, his Honour informed them that the first thing for them to determine was, that Sullivan had been murdered; and secondly, they must be certain that he had been killed by the prisoner. It was unfortunate in the present case, that it rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, it was not for us, as human beings, to call in question the reasons why divine providence at times allowed such events as the present to be involved in obscurity. Whatever might be the impression on the minds of the jury, they were not to go beyond the evidence, and they were only to credit it, when it was such as was reasonable, and such as would satisfy rational beings. The conduct of the prisoner had certainly been such as to place him under circumstances of great suspicion; and it became an important enquiry for the jury to ascertain whether he was, at the time alleged, in a condition to be robbed, and pointed out the contradiction which the prisoner’s unsupported statement, as to his being possessed of £37, had received from several of the witnesses, also that the prisoner before the alleged robbery, had been employed for several days previous in removing his goods and chattels from the hut, and put it to them whether it was likely that in doing so he should leave the trowsers behind him, with such a sum of money in the pockets. They were to determine, not only that a human being had been murdered, but that the individual killed was an adult white male named Sullivan. It was the duty of the jury to judge of the credibility of the evidence. They would also take into account the manner in which the prisoner had endeavoured to assail the credibility of the witnesses, which had not been borne out. The prisoner had made a very ingenious defence, and had embarrassed the case in a very artful manner; but still they were not to regard his having done so as being any thing against the prisoner; it was his right to avail himself of all legitimate means of defence which the law allowed him, and he should like to see every one, whether innocent or guilty, able to conduct their own defence. (He then went over the whole of the evidence and briefly recapitulated the observations he had made at the commencement of his address.) He considered it a strong circumstance against the prisoner, that Sullivan had absconded as alleged by him, and that, too, at a time when £24 was due to him; but it was somewhat mitigated by another part of the evidence, which showed that £16 of that would have been retained to clear his old account, with the first witness; he also pointed out that there was a variance between the statement made by the prisoner before the magistrate, and that given in the Court; as in the latter statement, he asserted that two regatta shirts, his property, had been carried off by Sullivan; but he had not mentioned these when he applied for the warrant to get him apprehended.  He subsequently called their attention to the fire having been seen in the direction of the prisoner’s hut so soon after Sullivan had been last seen, and to the scars which had been seen on the prisoner’s face on the day after the fire had been observed, together with the adroit manner in which the bones had been concealed immediately after the alleged burning of the body had taken place.

            The jury retired at half-past eight and returned in about an hour after, finding the prisoner – Guilty.

            On being asked what he had to say in arrest of judgment, the prisoner said “I am a murdered man; I am innocent of the charge of which I have been found guilty.”

            The usual proclamation having been made, His Honor proceeded to pass sentence on the prisoner, by informing him, that he had been found guilty of a most barbarous and horrible murder; and he was sorry to say, that if it had been possible to add an aggravation to the crime, the prisoner had done so in two ways; in the first place by the means which he had employed to conceal it; and secondly, he had that day set up a defence of the most wicked description. He had asserted he was innocent, and was a murdered man; but he could assure him, that there was one Bar, at which he would have to appear with every one then present, when such an assertion would not avail him, without it was a true one. From all the circumstances of the case, as exposed by the evidence adduced against him, he could not conceive that it had been the first enormous crime of a similar description in which he had been implicated. The conclusion at which he arrived from a survey of the evidence was, that the perpetration of the crime had been the work of one who had well studied the art of concealing such offences. The defence was another gross aggravation of the awful crime of which he had been found guilty, and that was, of charging the principal witnesses against him, with being implicated in the fraud in which he had after his committal confessed himself as being concerned, for the purpose of defrauding his employer, and insinuated that he was the victim of their malice, all which had been most distinctly disproved by the respectable testimony of Mr. Pearman, which the prisoner had not even ventured to impugn. It was not for him to sit in judgment on the verdict of the jury, by which the prisoner had been convicted, he regarded it as the verdict of twelve honest men, and as such he fully concurred in it. It was true that the ingenuity of the prisoner in the mode by which he made arrangements for concealing the remains of his victim, and also by the line of defence which he had that day followed up, had surrounded the case with great legal difficulties; but still he felt it his duty to declare that there was no moral doubt as to the prisoner having been the murderer of Sullivan. He had, during the trial, done what he considered to be his duty, not only in shutting his own eyes and ears against whatever was not strictly legal evidence, but had also endeavoured to keep from the jury whatever was not of this description and yet the prisoner asserted he was innocent. He thought it proper to state that there were two circumstances which had been presented before the Court that day, which had they been established by legal evidence would not have left the prisoner even an excuse for making such an assertion, and these were, connecting the bloody nightcap with the deceased, and identifying the old shoes as belonging to him; he therefore trusted that the prisoner when conveyed to his cell, would devote the short portion of time allotted him, in repenting of his crimes, and making his peace with his Maker, for he assured him, that the sentence he was about to pass on him, would be carried into effect. He then passed sentence in the usual form.

            The prisoner is a native of Ireland, from which he arrived in this colony in 1830, as a convict, per the James Patterson, under a sentence of seven years for pig-stealing. In cross-examining the witnesses he exhibited great ingenuity, and did his best to brow-beat them, and in several instances was grossly insulting. During the time his Honor was addressing him, he several times exclaimed, “I am innocent; I am a murdered man; I do not blame your lordship, I leave my blood on the jury and the witnesses.” As the prisoner was being removed from the bar, the Attorney-General said that he considered it but due to the jury to state, that had the prisoner been acquitted on the charge of murdering Sullivan, he was prepared to put on his trial for the murder of another man, who had been his mate at Goulburn, and who had disappeared under similar circumstances about three years ago.

            The case excited great interest, and the Court was densely crowded during the twelve hours that the trial lasted.

Notes