London has been startled this week by a very great
crime. A letter was received on Monday morning by the police at Smith- field station, signed "J. W. Duggan," and warning them to go to 15 Hosier Lane. They went, and found an entire family, the writer of the letter, his wife, and six children, all lying dead, poisoned with prussic acid, under circumstances which suggested, or rather proved, that the children had been poisoned with the assent of the wife. Duggan, in his letter, referred the police to his brother at Bristol, to whom it appears he had written a letter dated the day before the murders, but evidently finished the day after,—prussic acid, writes Duggan, "was the thing used,"—in which the unhappy man declares that he had been tyrannically dismissed, and turned out of his house by his master ; that he and his must starve in the streets, or go to the workhouse, or die, and he prefers the latter, and implies that his wife agreed with him. "We love the children dearly, too dearly, to condemn them to utter wretchedness and want." The poison, if the chemist who sold it told the truth, was obtained through a friend in the same trade, and was administered, it is believed, to the children in sleep and to the wife awake. Death was instantaneous and pain- less, except in the case of Duggan himself, whose mouth was drawn down. The jury found that husband and wife had killed their children and themselves while of "unsound mind."
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