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case as one which, for unsubdued resolution, craftiness of plan, and perseverance of exertion, is beyond all parallel in the records of systematic villainy. The incessant vigilance necessary to elude detection-the Spartan fortitude in suppressing the evidences of pain-the youth of the delinquent-the skilful arrangement connected with the infamous plot-when all these are taken into consideration, we are inclined to subscribe to the philosophy of those who assert the omnipotence of mind over the baser materials of our nature, and cease to wonder at the tortured Indian, who, in the ingeniously-protracted agonies of death, derides the savage triumph of his enemies.

SURREY.

BRUTAL VIOLENCE-A circumstance happened in the neighbourhood of Vauxhall, at the recent celebration of a Jewish wedding in Smith's Tea Gardens, which calls for inquiry and justice. It seems that a Nobleman, not distinguished for the morality of his conduct, was in a pleasure-boat, with a party of friends, who had their vessel brought near the shore, in order to witness the spectacle, and were particularly struck with the appearance of three young women, who were drawn to the spot by the same motive. The Nobleman, and two or three of his party, attempted to force the girls into the boat, but did not succeed, and the latter went to another part of the gardens. They were followed, however, suddenly seized, and carried into the vessel, and the boatmen were ordered to proceed to Richmond. The violent screams of the girls at length induced the head of the party to order the boat back to Westminster-bridge, where two hackney coaches were brought, into each of which one of the young women was placed, and the third was taken into a phaeton by the Nobleman himself, but covered in such a manner by a box-coat, that she was unable to struggle with him, The girls in the coaches, in spite of all attempts to restrain them, made such a noise as to draw people about them, and, with a desperate effort, one of them escaped, but the other was taken to a house of a certain descriptionin the neighbourhood of Soho; luckily, however, she caught hold of the iron railing at the door, and, by the assistance of passengers, was also enabled to escape. The third girl, hearing that her companions had escaped, threw herself, encumbered as she was, out of the phaeton, and was also rescued by the efforts of the passengers in the street. The disappointed party then deemed it necessary to leave the place,

amidst the execrations of the crowd, but vowing revenge, and a determination to get the intended victims once more into their power. It seems strange that in this city men should be found so regardless of the law, and capable of such daring violence; but we are assured, by a very respectable correspondent, that the whole of this story is true, and that measures are taking to ascertain the guilty parties, and bring them to punish

ment.

STAFFORDSHIRE,

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REMARKABLE CASE OF ABSTINANCE. Aun Moor, of Tutbury, on the 4th of November, 1866, owing, as is supposed to a nausea arising from having attended a young man, who desire of food, and from that time till the March was afflicted with scrofulous ulcers, lost all following, she did not take more than half an took her bed, and from that time till the 20th of ounce a day. On the 14th of April, 1807, she May following, she took nothing but tea without cream, and soon afterward without sugar. The last solid food she took was a few black currants about the end of June in the same year, and from this time she gradually diminished her quantity of liquids, sometimes omitting to take any for two or three successive days. So extraordinary a case of abstinance, naturally caused a great deal of conversation, and the doubts of the publie so far prevailed over their belief, that she submitted to be watched for any length of time that might be thought necessary. A watch, con. sisting of certain medical men and others, was ac cordingly appointed, and she was removed from her own house for the purpose, and not left without her watch one moment for sixteen successive days and nights. The result of this investigation, which commenced on the 12th of September, 1808, and terminated on the 27th of the same month, convinced the most incredulous, that she actually subsisted without food! Up to that time she had been accustomed to take about half an ounce of water a day, but the violent rising of the wind in its passage became so painful, that Mr. Taylor, one of the medical gentlemen in at. tendance, advised her only to wipe her mouth with a moistened cloth, and from that time to the present time, she never ventured to swallow even liquids. Her person exhibited, as might be supposed, the most wonderful phenomena ever witnessed: she was emaciated beyond description; in the abdomen there was no appearance of entrails, all the parts appeared to

have been drawn up and lost under the breast furniture of the parlour placed against it. Shortbone and ribs. The spine might, without givingly after Sir John heard the noise in front of his

house, the windows of the parlour were dashed in, and the noise occasioned by the feet of the robbers in leaping from the window down upon the parlour, appeared to denote a gang of not less than fourteen in number, as it struck him. He immediately got out of bed, and the first determination he took being to make resistance, it was with no small mortification that he reflected upon the un

her much pain, be easily felt, by pressing the hand upon the abdomen; and the great artery which rises immediately out of the left ventricle of the heart, and its pulsation and circumference easily perceived. Round the hips, says Mr. Taylor, in his communication to the Medical Journal, she measured thirty inches, round the chest twenty-eight inches and one half, and round the loins twenty inches and one half-armed condition in which he was placed, being Early in 1809 she was deprived of the power of moving her legs, and from that time all the lower parts of her body below her hips, appeared as if they were dead. During her confinement, she indulged herself with taking snuff pretty freely, and she was for the most part talkative and chearful, but she could not endure any person in the room who had recently taken the smallest quantity of malt or spiritous liquors. These facts, incredible as they may appear, rest upon incon trovertible evidence, and will scarcely be doubted by the most incredulous. Two cases somewhat similar are mentioned in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, and it is now ascer tained beyond a doubt, that under some rare circumstances a human being may exist for months and years without aliment.

IRELAND.

SINGULAR INTREPIDITY.-Maurice Noonan was tried at the Cork Assizes, for a burglary and an attempt to rob the house of Sir John Purcell, at Highfort, on the night of the 11th of March last. The trial excited considerable interest; every body seemed anxious to hear the narration of a transaction, in which on one side though the guilt exhibited may be but too frequently equalled, the courage, intrepidity, and cooluess displayed on the other, has been never exceeded, and seldom indeed has it been matched in the history of human resolution.-Sir John Purcell, the first witness called, deposed a most interesting and manly statement, the substance of which only we pretend to report. He said, that on the night of the 11th of March last, about one o'clock at night, and after he had retired to bed, he heard some noise outside the window of his parlour. He slept on the ground floor in a room immediately adjoining the parlour. There was a door from one room into the other, but this having been found inconvenient, and there being another passage from the bed-chamber more accommodating, it was nailed up, and some of the

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destitute of a single weapon of the ordinary sort. In this state he spent little time in deliberation, as it almost inmediately occurred to him that having supped in the bed-chamber on that night, a knife had been left behind by accident, and he instantly proceeded to grope in the dark for this weapon, which happily he found, before the door, leading from the parlour into the bedchamber, had been broken. While he stood in calm but resolute expectation that the progress of the robbers would soon lead them to his bedchamber, he heard the furniture which had been placed against the nailed-up door expeditiously displaced, and immediately afterwards this door was burst open. The moon shone with great brightness, and when this door was thrown open, the light streaming in through three large windows in the parlour, afforded a view that might have made an intrepid spirit not a little apprehensive. His bed-room was darkened to excess, in consequence of the shutters of the windows, as well as the curtains being closed; and thus while he stood enveloped in darkness, he saw, stand before him, by the brightness of the moon-light, a body of men all armed, and of those who were in the van of the gang, he observed that a few were blackened. Armed only with this case-knife, and aided only by a dauntless heart, he took his station by the side of the door, and in a moment after, one of the villains entered from the parlour into the dark room. In= stantly upon advancing, Sir John plunged the knife at him, the point of which entered under the right arm, and in a line with the nipple, and so home was the blow sent, that the knife passed into the robber's body, until Sir John's hand stopped its further progress. Upon receiving this thurst, the villain reeled back into the parlour, calling out blasphemously that he was killed; and shortly after another advanced, who was res ceived in a similar manner, and who also stags gered back into the parlour, crying out that he was wounded. A voice from the outside gave orders to fire into the dark room, upon which a

man stepped forward with a short gun in his || grasp of his adversary was losing its constraint

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and pressure, and in a moment or two after he found himself entirely released from it-the limbs of the robber were in fact by this time unnerved by death. Sir John found that this fellow had a

and gave several blows with it, his knife being no longer serviceable; at length the robbers finding that so many of their party had been killed or wounded, employed themselves in removing the bodies, and Sir Jahn took this oppor

hand, which had the butt broken off at the small, and which had a piece of card tied round the barrel and stock at the swell. As this fellow stood in the act to fire, Sir John had the amazing coolness to look at his intended murderer, and with-sword in his hand, and this he immediately seized, out betraying any audible emotion whatever, that he might point out the ex spot which he was standing in, he calmly calculated his own safety from the shot which was preparing for him. He saw that the contents of the piece were likely to pass close to his breast without menac-tunity of retiring into a place a little apart from ing him with at least any serious wound, and in this state of firm and manly expectation, he stood without flinching until the piece was fired, and its contents harmlessly lodged in the wall. It was loaded with a brace of bullets and three slugs. As soon as the robber fired, Sir John made a pass at him with the knife, and wounded him in the arm, which he repeated again in a moment, with similar effect, and as the others. had done, the villain, upon being wounded, retired, exclaiming, that he was wounded. The robbers immediately rushed forward from the parlour into the dark room, and then it was that Sir John's mind recognized the deepest sense of danger, not to be oppressed by it, however, but to surmount it. He thought that all chance of preserving his own life was over, and he resolved to sell that life still dearer to his intended murderers, than even what they had already paid for the attempt to deprive him of it.He did not lose a moment after the villains had,, entered the room, to act with the determination he had adopted; he struck at the fourth with his knife, and wounded him, and, at the same time he received a blow on the head, and found himself grappled with. He shortened his hold of the knife, and stabbed repeatedly at the fellow with whom he found himself engaged. floor being slippery from the blood of the wouded man, Sir John and his adversary both fell, and while they were on the ground, Sir John thinking that his thrusts with the knife, though made with all his force, did not not seem to produce the decisive effect which they had inspicuous, and at the same time earnestly exacting the beginning of the conflict, he examined the point of his weapon with his finger, and found that the blade of it had been bent near the point. As he lay struggling on the ground, he endeavvoured, but unsucessfully, to straighten the curvature in the knife, but while one hand was employed in this attempt, he perceived that the

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the house, where he remained for a short time. They dragged their companions into the parlour, and having placed chairs with the backs up. wards, by means of those they lifted the bodies out of the windows and afterwards took them away, The next day the alarm having been given, search was made for the robbers, and Sir John having gone to the house of the prisoner, Maurice Noonan, upon searching, he found concealed under his bed the identical short gun with which one of the robbers had fired at him. Noonan was inmediately secured, and sent to gaol, and upon being visited by Sir John Purcell, he acknowledged that Sir John. " had like to do for him," and was proceeding to show, until Sir John prevented him, the wounds he had received from the knife in the arm. An accomplice of the name of John Daniel Sullivan was produced, who deposed that he was one of the party that met at Noonan's house to rob Highfort-house--that they were nine in number, and had arms-that the prisoner was one of the number, and that he car. ried a small gun. Upon the gun (which was in the Court) being produced, with which Sir John had been fired at, the prisoner said it was that with which the prisoner was armed the night of the attack. Witness said he did not go into Mr. Purcell's house-that two men were killed and three severely wounded, out of the nine of which the party consisted. The prisoner made no defence, and Judge Mayne then proceeded to charge the Jury in a manner the most copious and per

for the prisoner whatever could be expected from a junction of the purest humanity with justice. He commended with due approbation the bravery and presence of mind displayed through a conflict so unequal and so bloody by Sir John Purcell.The Jury after a few minutes returned their ver dict—Guilty.

London: Printed by JOHN BELL, Southampton street, Strand. October 1, 1811.

BEING

Bell's

COURT AND FASHIONABLE

MAGAZINE,

FOR OCTOBER, 1811.

A New Series.

EMBELLISHMENTS.

1. A correct Portrait of the Right Honourable LADY MOUNTNORRIS.

9. The SCHOOLMASTER; by VAN OSTADE.

3. THE SMOAKER; by Ditto.»

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5. Exterior of the CONSERVATORY at CARLTON-HOUSE.

6. Au elegant and new PATTERN for NEEDLE-WORK.

7. THE QUEEN OF THE MAY, an Irish Song for the Ladies; an Original Song for the Harp and Plauro-forte, composed by Mr. DIRDIN, expressly and exclusively for this Work.

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Darkness Visible

Works in the Press

221

ib.

ib.

222

ib.

ib.

ib.

MONTHLY MISCELLANY.

A curious Circumstance

Kamtchatka, or the Slave's Tribute...... 214 Extraordinary Fecundity

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Robbery at the Crown Inn, Portsmouth.. ib.

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Curious Robbery
Enraged Bull

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ib.

Mr. Sadler's Balloon

Bishop of Dromore

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Supplementary Advertisements for the
Month.

293

ib.

ib.

ib.

224

TO OUR SUBSCRIBERS AND THE PUBLIC.

HAVING been favoured by MR. HOPPER with his original Design of the Exterior of the PRINCE REGENT'S CONSERVATORY, the Interior of which was given in No. 22, of La BELLE ASSEMBLEE, we are now happy in having an opportunity of gratifying our Subscribers with a View of that magnificent Structure; and, though at a very extraordinary expence, we give this beautiful Print as a substitute for the Second Print of Fashion, which otherwise would have appeared as usual in the present Number,

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS, on all'interesting subjects, are now admitted into the New Series of LA BELLE ASSEMBLEE, if written in a chaste and elegant style. Authentic accounts of Births, Marriages, Deaths, and Provincial Intelligence, possessing any peculiar character,will hereafter meet with the most respectful attention, and a reason will be assigned in the next successive Numbers for whatever articles may be omitted; but it is requested that all Letters be sent free of Postage.

London:

PRINTED BY AND FOR JOHN BELL, SOLE PROPRIETOR OF THIS MAGAZINE AND OF THE WEEKLY MESSENGER, SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, STRAND, NOVEMBER 1,

1811.

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