capable of throwing light upon the transaction. In the case of George Hebner, a tailor, who was found hanging to the top of a bedstead, in a garret of a house of ill-fame in Dean Street, East Smithfield, kept by a widow of the name of Hughes, the manner in which the hands of the deceased were tied behind his back, and his handkerchief was drawn over his face, proved most decidedly that he had not strangled himself. Upon examining the rope round his neck, it was found to have been fastened by what is termed a sailor's knot; in consequence of which circumstance a sailor named Richard Ludman, together with the aforesaid Eleanor Hughes, were indicted for the murder, found guilty, and executed.
If the deceased be found in an apartment, whether it be in a house of ill-fame?—Although the act of sudden death in a brothel very naturally excites the suspicion that some act of violence may have been committed, yet this feeling should not be carried too far; we must remember that the individual has been thus exposed, in an increased degree, to the occurrence of several of those natural accidents by which life is so suddenly extinguished; apoplexy, hæmopthysis, and syncope have assailed those who might have been predisposed to such diseases, at the moment of sexual indulgence. In persons advanced in life the trunks of the internal, carotid, and basilary arteries are frequently diseased, and are therefore very liable to rupture whenever the blood is accumulated in any unusual quantity, or the circulation is preternaturally accelerated.
