Clear cut?

A very terrible murder was committed at St. Leonard's, Hastings, at the residence of Miss M. A. C. Moore, Catharine Villa. Miss Moore, Dr. Moore, her brother, and all the servants, except the cook, left the villa in their carriage, as was usual, for the purpose of attending Divine service at Hastings.

The cook, Mary Ann Newman, who was 50 years of age, and had been a servant in the family 27 years, was the only person connected with the establishment who was left in the house. On returning from church, Dr. Moore, his sister, and the servants were unable to obtain admission; and on the footman entering through a window, and opening the front door, the house was found to have been ransacked; property, consisting of jewellery, watches, &c., of the value of 150l., was missed; and the cook was found in a passage weltering in her blood, her skull having been driven in by repeated blows of a spade standing near. Life was not quite extinct, and the unfortunate woman lingered till Tuesday, when she died.

Inquiries were immediately instituted by the police for the discovery of the murderer, but nothing was found to point out the perpetrator; after the lapse of some days it was ascertained that a man named Pierson, who had formerly been coachman in the family had, at about half-past 12 o'clock on the morning of the murder, called at a public-house, known as the Victoria, at Hollington, about two miles off, on the road to Battle Abbey. He here asked for a drink of water, stating that he was “hard up." This was given to him, and he then went towards Hastings, and asked for more water at the turn pike-gate, a quarter of a mile nearer Hastings.

This led to a minute search in the neighbourhood, and some foot-tracks were discovered exactly corresponding with his shoes. One of his shoes had on the toe an iron “tip,” broken in a peculiar manner, and a corresponding peculiarity was found in the foot-tracks. Pursuing these tracks, the searchers came to the leaves of a “shaw," a provincial expression denoting a narrow slip of coppice running like a hedge-row from the road between two fields, about 40 yards from the Victoria public house.

Here the tracks were lost; but in this shaw, on Friday morning, James Ashdown, a farm labourer, observed an ash “teller," from which the bark had been gnawed by teeth in a place nearly as large as the palm of the hand; and, conjecturing that the mark had been made as a guide to the place where plunder had been deposited, he pulled away the leaves and rubbish, and discovered just beneath the surface the whole of the property known to have been stolen, and likewise various articles, the property of Miss Moore, but which had not been missed. The whole of this property was tied in a handkerchief, which was identified as the property of the prisoner. Pierson was immediately apprehended.

He was tried at the spring assizes and acquitted.