1838—At the Summer Assizes this year a very painful and remarkable case of circumstantial evidence took place, being no other than the trial of a wife and daughter for the murder of one who had stood to them in the relation of husband and father. On the evening of the 3rd of August, 1837, Mr. John Orchard, the landlord of the Woolstaplers’ Arms Inn, in Stourbridge, a man in the prime of life and in good health, was seen to go up the yard attached to his house, and his wife and eldest daughter, with a man named Smith, were seen to follow him. He never returned alive. Smith came down the yard again shortly, but the wife and daughter remained there some time. Two or three hours afterwards the daughter told some of the people in the house that her father was very ill, and she was afraid he would die; but no one saw him until he was actually dead. When a surgeon arrived the body was on a chair in the kitchen, and Mrs. Orchard was supporting the head in her hands. She pointed the surgeon’s attention to a small hole between the third and fourth ribs, immediately over the heart, and said she supposed it was done by a nail in tumbling over some tubs in the yard. He had a shirt on, but there was no hole in that. The brewhouse, tubs, and yard appeared to have been just washed, and the opinion of the medical man was, that Orchard must have been dead an hour at least when he saw him. On a post mortem examination, the wound in question was found to be four inches and a half deep, and went right through the pericardium and right ventricle, so that it must have caused almost instant death. Of course grave suspicion under these circumstances could not but attach to the mother and daughter, especially as there had been repeated quarrels between them and the deceased, and the wife was also suspected to have been improperly familiar with the man Smith. The coroner’s jury, however, returned a verdict of “wilful murder against some parties unknown,” and months passed without any further discovery. At last a woman, who had assisted in laying out the corpse, told some party that the man was murdered with a skewer, which was afterwards thrown into the Stour. The woman, when interrogated by the police, denied having said anything of the sort; but a skewer—just such an instrument as would have produced the wound—was found in the Stour, nevertheless. The wife and daughter were then apprehended and put on their trial. Mr. Whateley conducted the prosecution, and Mr. Godson the defence. The judge, Lord Abinger, told the jury that they must not convict the prisoners on suspicion, and they were both acquitted.