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MAGUS

47 investigation into all the circumstances of the case, you have been found guilty and on a review of the evidence brought forward in the course of that trial, it is my opinion that no other verdict could [have] been returned. You now, therefore, await the dreadful sentence of the law being passed on you. Your victim was your own child – a child about five or six years of age – helpless and sickly in its constitution – when this is taken into consideration, the mind, in contemplating the act, can only be possessed by one feeling and that is one of [the] greatest horror that it is possible to conceive. You cannot expect any mercy in this world and, therefore it will be absolutely necessary for you to use the little time that will be left to you to supplicate for that mercy in the next world of which you stand so much in need and I would earnestly recommend you set about doing so. I am now obliged to pass on you the sentence the law allows me which is this – that you be taken from this place whence you came and from that to the usual place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you be dead and that your dead body be buried within the precincts of the prison; and may the Lord have mercy on your soul!’ During the delivery of this address in which his Lordship appeared much affected, the prisoner did not betray the least symptom of agitation or weakness – He stood perfectly unmoved and apparently regardless of what was going on. On being conveyed back to the gaol, the only symptom that could be observed of the working of the mind within was a slight hectic blush the overspread his countenance. He walked away with a firm and steady step. Belfast Newsletter, 23 July 1852, County of Antrim Court Assizes (Belfast), Child Murder. Petit Jury – Messrs. James Boyd, James S. Cunningham, James Ellison, Hugh Erskine, William Erskine, William Shaw Ferguson, John Lawther, John Ligget, Hugh Halliday Hannay, John Kelly, James Moore and Samuel Molyneaux. Samuel Gilmore was next indicted for the murder of a child, name unknown, on 9th June at Ballymacormick. Sir Thomas Staples stated the case for the prosecution. Catherine Montgomery examined by Mr. Law – ‘I have known the prisoner these ten years. I live with my brothers and sisters. I had a child by the prisoner. The child was born on 11 April. He wanted me to marry him, but I did not do so. The prisoner demanded the child from

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