Democratic Standard

From the Boston Morning Post Extra, Sept. 20.

AWFUL MURDER OF A YOUNG WOMAN.

Yesterday forenoon a most fiendlike murder was committed in the Cambridge alms-house, (Cambridgeport,) on the person of a young woman, named Sarah Stevenson, by a man named William H. Britton. He plunged a huge carving knife in between her right fore shoulder and breast, clear through her heart and lungs, and out under her left shoulder blade.

Britton, as a pauper, became an inmate of the alms-house in September, 1840, being aged, and somewhat infirm. He possessed some literary acquirements, and was employed as a teacher to the children in the establishment. In June last, Miss Stephenson, then laboring under a painful disease, became an inmate of the house, and after she had improved in health in some degree, she undertook to learn to write under the instructions of Britton. In consequence of the familiar intercourse naturally arising thus, Britton conceived a violent passion for her, and proposed to marry her.

She declined on account of his age and inability to support a family. He pressed his suit, and she laid the subject before Mr. Valentine, the excellent superintendent, who at once advised her to avoid Britton as much as she could, and told her, whenever he entered her room, to leave it, and come into his private apartment. She acted upon this advice for some weeks. On Sunday morning he entered her room, and she then left it, and went into one occupied by two other women.

He did not immediately follow her, and she began to read to her companions from a New Testament, which Mr. Valentine had presented to her. While thus engaged Britton entered, and said to the other two women, "is this your room?" Before they returned any definite answer, he drew the carving knife from under his shirt bosom, advanced to the deceased, seized her round the body and flung her on a bed. One of the women caught hold of him, but he turned upon her with the uplifted knife, like a tiger, and she quailed before him. The other woman then grasped him round the body, but was driven off in the same manner as the first one. The deceased in the meantime was exclaiming—"Don't kill me! Don't kill me!" He first made a violent pass at her throat, but she partly stopped the knife with her right hand, in which it cut a horrible gash, four inches long, but only barely scratched her throat.—He then struck at her as above stated, and drove the knife clear through the body.