Mayor's Court.
--This Court met at nine o'clock yesterday morning, when the following cases were taken up and disposed of:
Richard L. Saunders was examined and sent on to the Hustings Court for stealing locks from the vaults and enclosures in Hollywood Cemetery.
It appeared that
Mr. James Ryan, while passing through the cemetery about ten o'clock Sunday morning, saw
Saunders breaking off the locks from the private enclosures with a long screw driver, and slipping them into his pockets.
After watching him for awhile, and seeing him break off a lock from the railing around
Mr. Wellington Goddin's lot
Mr. Ryan went off and informed
Mr. O'Keeffe, keeper of the cemetery, of the facts, when
Mr. O'Keeffe arrested
Saunders, and found in his pockets seven locks and the screw-driver with which he had been operating.
When arrested
Saunders said he was a soldier from Camp Lee, and that he was stealing the locks to sell for bread.
In Court, however, he tried to produce the idea that he had bought both the chisel and locks from
Mr. Ryan, one of the witnesses against him. He was sent on to the Hustings Court, and, if convicted, will be likely to go to the penitentiary, as he has before been convicted of petty larceny, and the effect of two convictions for petty larceny being to amount to a felony.
William and
Elijah Pittman, free negroes, were ordered thirty lashes each for robbing an old negro named
Martin Smith of fifty dollars. The rogues decoyed the old negro into a sequestered spot last Sunday, under pretence of having some flour to sell him, when William grabbed his money, which he had in his hand, and ran off, while Elijah held him and prevented him from making any outcry.
After William had been arrested Elijah came to the old negro and returned him his fifty dollars, and tried to induce him not to prosecute the ease.
Edward, slave of
Mr. Wm. Winston Jones, was charged with attempting to break into the tailoring establishment of
Mr. Gustavus R. Howard, and with shooting at watchman
Marcellus Hicks, with intent to kill him.--The negro had several severe wounds on the top of his head, inflicted by
Mr. Hicks's club on the night of the attempted burglary.--The circumstances of the case, as they came out in the evidence, may be briefly summed up. On Sunday night a week ago, about two o'clock, some watchmen discovered five negroes in the act of breaking in the rear door of
Mr. Howard's store.
The negroes fled, and were pursued by the watchmen, and two of them captured.
Watchman
Hicks pursued Edward, who, getting to a secluded part of Council Chamber
Hill, turned on the watchman and fired his pistol at him, the ball passing through his coat and grazing his side
Mr. Hicks then knocked the prisoner down several times, but the latter finally managed to escape, leaving his coat, pistol, and hat in the hands of the watchman.
Some papers in the coat led to his identification, and the police have been on the look out for him ever since.
Yesterday morning, about one o'clock,
officer Jenkins caught him secreted in the house of his wife, on Duval street. He was sent on to be tried before the Hustings Court.
Peter, slave of
Edward Smith, was charged with stealing a trunk valued at fifteen hundred dollars, fifty bunches of fish, and fourteen dozen eggs, from
Wm. J. Jennings, of
Charles City.
It appeared that Monday night
Mr. Jennings put his cart, containing the trunk, fish, eggs, and some other things, into
Woodward's stable, on Franklin street, below 17th, and that during the night the stable was broken open and the trunk, fish, and eggs stolen.
Early yesterday morning Peter was found selling some of the fish in the first fish market.
He was arrested, and in a cellar on the corner of Main and 19th streets, where it was ascertained he had staid the night before, the trunk and some bunches of the stolen fish were found.
The trunk had been broken open and its contents carried off. The
Mayor ordered the negro 39 lashes.