Old World Trials. organized, I believe, in 1891, for the purpose of adjudicating claims to private ownership in land before it was ceded to the United States. There have been filed in this court upward of forty cases, over thirty of which are located in New Mexico, the total area claimed amounting to nearly two and a half million acres. These, of course, are grants alleged to have been made to private parties
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before New Mexico became the property of the United States, and the only way of prov ing the truth or falsity of the claims is to patiently and carefully overhaul old Spanish records and archives, much worn and very badly arranged. In this way not only the fact of the grants but also their proper boundaries and areas have to be established. — Kate Field's Washington.
OLD WORLD TRIALS. VIII. THE CASE OF FREDERICK AND MARIA MANNING. ON 25th October, 1849, Frederick Man ning and his wife Maria were tried before Chief Baron Pollock, Mr. Justice Maule, and Mr. Justice Cresswell, and a jury of the City of London, at the Old Bailey, now the Central Criminal Court, for the murder of a person named Patrick O'Connor under the following circumstances : Frederick Manning had at one time been a guard in the service of the Great Western Railway Company, but had been discharged on suspicion of having been concerned in a series of robberies committed on that line. Maria Manning was a Swiss by birth, and her maiden name was De Roux. After Frederick Manning's dismissal from the post of railway guard, this worthy couple had opened an inn at Taunton, whence they had removed, at the time when the pres ent story opens, to No. 3 Miniver Place, Bermondsey, near London. Patrick O'Con nor, with whose murder the Mannings were charged, was an officer in the Customs. He lodged not far from Miniver Place, and carried on an adulterous intercourse with Mrs. Manning, whose conduct seems to have been regarded by her husband with perfect equanimity. He was a man possessed of considerable property, a fact well known to Maria Manning, who by his express per mission had a right of entry to his room
at any moment, whether he was at home at the time or not. On 9th August, 1849, O'Connor left his lodgings about five o'clock with the avowed intention of going to " dine with Maria." He had received a letter of invitation from her in the morning. This letter he had shown to a companion, to whom he an nounced that he meant to accept the invi tation which it contained. He was seen to walk in the direction of Miniver Place. But he never returned to his lodgings. After a few days his mysterious disappearance began to attract public attention, and hand-bills were printed and circulated offering a re ward for his discovery. An ugly rumor got abroad that Maria Manning had visited O'Connor's rooms on the evening of his disappearance; the rooms were searched and it was found that his drawers and boxes had been broken into and their contents rifled; of course the police at once repaired to 3 Miniver Place to arrest the Mannings. The birds had flown, and flown in different directions. It was thought advisable how ever to search the nest. A certain damp ness in the cement between the flagstones on the kitchen floor arrested the attention of a police officer : the flagstones were torn up, and the dead body of O'Connor was found underneath. He had evidently been
