The New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

HORRID MURDER.

LONDON, June 12.

Accounts from Riga mention a horrid murder having been committed at that place. A man who kept a tavern without one of the gates of the city, and had also a wind-mill on his ground, having detected one of his men servants in several frauds, turned him away and retained his wages for some little indemnification. The fellow at his going away threatened his master he would make him repent detaining his wages; whereupon he went and associated himself with eleven more as bad as himself. Soon after this they went to the house in the middle of the night, and meeting one of the maid-servants going for water, they murdered her, and put her body under the ice; they then entered the house and stables, and murdered three other women and five men servants; at last they entered the landlord's apartments, and murdered his wife and three of his children before his face; the fourth, a boy of five years old, had hid himself in the confusion, below a bed unperceived; they then forced the landlord to open all his chests and drawers, and carried away whatever was portable and valuable out of the house; they then tied the landlord neck and heels to the foot of a large table, at which they sat down and regaled themselves with the best things the house afforded; here they made an end to their repast, putting hay and straw in all the apartments; and then set the house on fire, that the villain of a landlord, as they called him, might be burnt alive, and which would also consume the murdered bodies, and prevent any possibility of a discovery; and, to make all sure, they brought the servant maid's body from under the ice, and laid it down by her living master: after this well laid plot, they set the house on fire, and fled with their booty. The little boy who was hid under the bed, was forced from thence by the smoke, and the father perceiving the child, called to him, and desiring him to take a knife out of his pocket, and cut the cord from off his hands, which the child did. The father being thus cleared, took his little one in his arms, and made his way through the flames, and immediately retired into the covered way of the town, for fear of being discovered by any of the villains who might be still lurking near the place. The house and out houses being all in flames, the governor ordered the gates to be opened, and sent out a party of men to try to save what they could from the fire; but, before they could get to the place all was burnt to the ground. The plot of those villains was so well laid, that if it had not been owing to the miraculous preservation of the child and his father, it might have forever remained a secret. The landlord discovering himself to the officer that was at the head of the detachment, intreated that he might be privately carried to the governor, to whom he discovered the whole of this dreadful scene, and who gave orders to secure and examine all persons who should enter the town that morning; by which caution the villains apprehending themselves secure from every possible discovery, as all evidence had perished in the fire, were, on their entering the town, every one taken, and soon after executed.