Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/100

86 of May for the prize of 100l. to be paid on the 5th of November following as her marriage portion, to an honest man, a member of the church of England, residing in the parishes of St. George, St. Paul, Shadwell, or St. John Wapping, and approved by the trustees; at which time another girl will be added to the five who shall have drawn blanks before and to her who shall then draw the prize will be paid 1001. on her marriage the first of May following; the remaining five to continue intitled to a chance twice in every year, when a new candidate will be admitted, that every girl educated in this hospital, and careful of her character, may have a chance for this noble donation.

Miss Bab. Wyndham, of Salisbury, sister of Henry Wyndham, Esq; of that city, a maiden lady of ample fortune, ordered her banker to prepare the sum of 1000l. to be immediately remitted, in her own name, as a present to the king of Prussia.

A notorious impostor was detected at Edinburgh. When taken up, he had on four pair of thick coarse stockings, a pillow under his waistcoat, and, by an affected motion in his head and hands, has had the address for some time past, to pass upon the inhabitants as both dropsical and paralytical, and a very great object of charity. When freed of his dressings, he comes out to be a strong well made fellow, and was immediately sent to the castle, as very fit to serve as a soldier.

Mr. Smelt, one of the engineers belonging to the board of ordnance, is now at Tinmouth castle, having orders to repair the old works, build barracks for 1000 men, and to erect new batteries towards the sea, in order to defend and be a safeguard to the ships when at anchor in the road.

A most shocking murder was committed at Hambleton on the Hill, a village near Oakham in Rutlandshire, upon the bodies of Anne Woods and Robert Broome, two poor aged cottagers, by John Swanson of that neighbourhood. Woods had employed Broome to trim a hedge, in a ground not far from her house; Swanson, being of the same occupation, and envious to see another preferred to himself, went to the hedge with a hatchet under his arm; but before he had got three parts of the way, he met the old woman returning home from the man; and, without any previous salutation, knocked her down with his hatchet. He then went to the place where the poor man was at work, knocked him down in the like manner, chopt off his head with the hatchet, opened his body, and plucked out his heart, which he wrapt up with the head, in a piece of old rag. He then returned to the dead corpse of the woman, cut down her stays before, opened her body, and pulling out her heart, bound up both the hearts and head together, which he carried home, and hid in a chest under his own bed. The officers of the parish, receiving information that Broome was murdered, immediately turned their suspicions upon Swanson, and went the same night to Swanson's house, and, being admitted, charged him with the murder, who, after standing dumb about three minutes,