The Week.

from breaking the windows of workhouses in order to ensure themselves lodging . On Saturday he committed a woman for a fortnight , saying that if he sent her for longer she would have good food , hut for the two weeks she would have to live on bread and water . The bravado with which the prisoner received the sentence seems to show that she felt the

punishment as the magistrate intended . Such persons as this woman are given to pretending stoicism when they are most grievously annoyed . On Saturday morning a very serious fire broke out in Dean-street , Soho , and destroyed property to the amount of sevoral thousand pounds . A police constable first discovered the conflagration , and having raised an alarm several engines

were speedily on the spot , but were unable to do more than prevent the fire from spreading to the adjoining buildings , some of which were , however , injured . Another fire in Lime-street , City , on Sunday morning , caused some alarm and did very serious damage . ——On Saturday the first case under the new

act for the regulation of the City traffic came before the sitting magistrate at the Guildhall . A carman in the employment of a firm in Bishopsgate-street was charged with driving a cart laden with timber exceeding 25 ft . in length through the City between the hours of nine a . m . and six p . m . Tho offence was proved , and a nominal fine , as it was the first case , was inflicted .

A few days since a mass of chalk fell suddenly and without warning upon some navvies that were making a cutting for a new line of railway between Deptford and Lewisham . Four of the men were buried under the mass , and it was some time before they could be extricated . When they were reached it was found that two were still living . The other two were dead .

The South London Foresters , who had their annual fete at the Crystal Palace on Tuesday , were favoured with better weather than their comrades of tlie general metropolitan district . The

amusements were of the usual description , and the benevolent fund of the lodges was benefited to a considerable extent by the receipts at the doors . A frightful wife murder is recorded by the Irish papers . A Mr . William Hudson , residing near Loughrea , in the West of Ireland , sitting quietly with his wife and daughter , suddenly seized a razor and cut his wife's throat ,

afterwards destroying himself in the same manner . His daughter was left unharmed . Mrs . Hudson was a member of a most respectable family , and she has left nine children to mourn her death at the hand of their father , who , it appears , had of late suffered from insanity . Strange that one so afflicted should have been allowed access to a razor ! It is very desirable that places of public amusement should be kept clear of

disorderly characters , who inflict upon the peaceably disposed visitors not only annoyance but injury . Mr . Giovannelli , of Highbury Barn , has had occasion to charge before the magistrate at the Clerkonwell Police-court four young men , who created a disturbance on his premises ou Saturday night , and all four were bound over to keep the peace—a penalty

about which we need not complain , but one which will be evidently insufficient in case of a repetition of such silly conduct . Franz Mailer is captured ! Such was the news that at once startled and satisfied London on Tuesday when the evening papers appeared . The iron grasp of the law is on him and—he protests his innocence . Protests his innocence the

while , as the detective runs his fingers into the prisoner's waistcoat pocket , he there finds the murdered man ' s watch . Protests his innocence , and is all the time wearing Mr . Brigg ' s hat . Surel y the chain is complete . Where is a link lacking ? And yet the man may not be guilty ; he may be able to prove an alibi ; he may succeed in showing that he fairly bought the watch , and the hat , and the chain , and that bleeding at the nose stained the sleeve lining found at his lodgings . All this is

possible ; and we would not prejudge even such a case as this . But the law has hunted him down ; innocent or guilty , it has its hand upon him ; and when London learnt the news it gave a sigh of relief ancl of thankfulness that the law had vindicated its power . There remains but the extradition , the Old Bailey , and—if conviction be there made—the last scene of all , the grim

doings in front of Newgate , with all low-life London to see , and stare , and go home to breakfast . In a tavern at Bow on Tuesday nig ht a man confessed to the landlord that he was Midler's accomplice in the murder of Mr . Briggs . At the Worship-street Police-court the fellow , who it appears was tipsy at the time of the confession , denied any further connection with

the murder than helping to carry Mr . Briggs's body from thc railway . There seems to he little doubt that the revelation was made as a bit of sensation bravado during drunkenness ; but

the magistrate seems to have found some reason for detaining the prisoner , who stands remanded for a week—by the end of which his imagination will probably have cooled down a little . We shall , likely enough , have some more of these sensation confessions from tipsy fools . ¦ Another Muller was on Tuesday found guilty at the Middlesex Sessions of wounding

with a knife a man who remonstrated at his brutal and indecent treatment of a child . At the Surrey Sessions two cases of indecent assault and one of indecent exposure occupied the deputy chairman's attention . They had also a stabbing case over the water ; but stabbing cases are frequent enough now , and imprisonments of six or nine months will not stop them .

At the Guildhall , on Wednesday , Charles Davis and William Cooper were brought up on remand , charged with conspiracy to defraud . The system pursued by the prisoners was rather ingenious . They got not goods , but expensive samples ; and when these were sent for again they alleged that a porter had called

and taken them away . The prisoners' defence was plausible . They said they were only servants , doing their best for a master ; and the reason why that master did not appear was that a sheriff ' s officer was looking for him with a writ . But if the evidence in the case is to he believed , the prisoners , by producing their master , would only drag him in , not exculpate themselves . At the Middlesex Sessions , on Wednesday , the Great Eastern

Railway Company prosecuted Thomas Wliyman for unlawfully opening gates at a crossing , ancl allowing a horse to get on the line to the danger of passengers . It appeared that the prisoner , desiring to catch a horse in a certain field , left the gate open while he chased the animal , which ran along the line and nearly

caused a very serious accident . The prisoner having been found guilty , the railway company was satisfied with his being held to bail to come up for judgment when called upon . -A man named John Barber was sentenced to six months' imprisonment and hard labour for an indecent assault on a child in a carriage of the City and Hammersmith Railway . For another indecent assault

on a child in Gordon-square , George Jones was sent to eight months' hard labour . These sentences , it is to be hoped , will do something to deter ruffians from insulting women aud children . The Lord Mayor on Wednesday committed to Newgate , for trial , a man named Christopher , who had written threatening letters to Mr . T . D . Hopper , a City merchant , who

was executor to the widow of a man formerly in Mr . Hopper's employment . The prisoner ' s alleged grievance was that Mr , Hopper had received a legacy rightly due to himself . The prisoner was arrested in the infirmary of a workhouse . The resumed inquest on the bodies of Mrs . Backingham aud Mrs . Gribbins , found dead in a house at Mile-end on the 26 th

August , was concluded on Wednesday . No allusion to the man of weak intellect found in the house with the corpses is to be seen in the verdict , which simply records the fact of death