DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.70302#0268
236
MISCELLANEOUS GLEANINGS.
After this a storm came out of the north which soon over-
spread the sky, and a little past four ended in a most
dreadful tempest of hail. The stones were of various
sizes, shapes and figures, and of a monstrous and immense
size. They seemed to be fragments of some huge cylin-
drical body of ice, broken and dashed to pieces in the
fall, vast numbers of which measured five or six inches in
circumference, and several measured nine, ten, and eleven
inches, even a considerable time after the storm was over.
Extraordinary young Murderer.
William York, a boy ten years old, was committed to
Ipswich gaol on Monday the 16th of May, 1748, for the
murder of Susan Mayhew, a child about five, who was his
bed-fellow in the poor-house belonging to the parish of
Eyke. He then confessed that a trifling quarrel happen-
ing between them on the 13th, about ten in the morning,
he struck her with his open hand and made her cry ; that
she going out of the house to the dung-hill, opposite to
the door, he followed her with a hook in his hand with an
intent to kill her, but before he came up to her he set
down the hook and went into the house for a knife. He
then came out again, took hold of the girl’s left hand, and
cut her wrist and just above the elbow of the same arm,
all round to the bone; that after this he set his foot upon
her stomach, and cut her right arm round about and to
the bone, both on the wrist and on the elbow; that he
then thought she would not die, and therefore took the
hook, and cut her left ham to the bone, and observing
she was not dead yet, struck her about three times on the
head with the hook broad-ways, and then found she was
dead. His next care was to conceal the murder, and the
manner in which he attempted to do it was astonishing
for a youth of his age; for this purpose he filled a pail
with water at a ditch, and washed the blood off the child’s
body, buried it in the dung-hill, together with the blood
that
MISCELLANEOUS GLEANINGS.
After this a storm came out of the north which soon over-
spread the sky, and a little past four ended in a most
dreadful tempest of hail. The stones were of various
sizes, shapes and figures, and of a monstrous and immense
size. They seemed to be fragments of some huge cylin-
drical body of ice, broken and dashed to pieces in the
fall, vast numbers of which measured five or six inches in
circumference, and several measured nine, ten, and eleven
inches, even a considerable time after the storm was over.
Extraordinary young Murderer.
William York, a boy ten years old, was committed to
Ipswich gaol on Monday the 16th of May, 1748, for the
murder of Susan Mayhew, a child about five, who was his
bed-fellow in the poor-house belonging to the parish of
Eyke. He then confessed that a trifling quarrel happen-
ing between them on the 13th, about ten in the morning,
he struck her with his open hand and made her cry ; that
she going out of the house to the dung-hill, opposite to
the door, he followed her with a hook in his hand with an
intent to kill her, but before he came up to her he set
down the hook and went into the house for a knife. He
then came out again, took hold of the girl’s left hand, and
cut her wrist and just above the elbow of the same arm,
all round to the bone; that after this he set his foot upon
her stomach, and cut her right arm round about and to
the bone, both on the wrist and on the elbow; that he
then thought she would not die, and therefore took the
hook, and cut her left ham to the bone, and observing
she was not dead yet, struck her about three times on the
head with the hook broad-ways, and then found she was
dead. His next care was to conceal the murder, and the
manner in which he attempted to do it was astonishing
for a youth of his age; for this purpose he filled a pail
with water at a ditch, and washed the blood off the child’s
body, buried it in the dung-hill, together with the blood
that