The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-06-22 00:00:00

TRIAL FOR PERJURY.

At tl,c Central Criminal Omit in London, the trial (which
had commenced too previone day) of John lieut.; Tapping, a
farm labourer, 19 years of age, on an indictment charging
him with wilful arid corrupt perjury, alleged to have been
c.immitted in the Divorce court, was resumed on Saturday.

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Mr. Fitzjam. Stephen, Q C., representing the Attorney-
Genets!, and with whom were Mr Poland end Mr. Beasley,
appeared as counsel for the prosecution winch had been in-
stituted by the Treasury : Dr. Kenealy, Q C., Mr. F. II:
Lewis, and Mr. Davis defended the prisoner.
•- • • •

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The prosecution turned on a recent suit in the
Divorce Court, in which the Rev. Mr. Partington, the
vicar of Stoke Mandeville, Buckinghamshire, bad
sought to obtain a divorce from his wife on the alleged
ground of her adultery with a young man named
Townend. In the divorce suit the prisoner and an-
other person named Edwards were called as principal
witnesses in support of the husband's case, find they
deposed to ai,ts of adultery committed in the vestry of
the church ,toke Ma ureville uie in reps -Tel occasions
after the choir practice. In the end the jury by their
ver diet negativedthe accusation of adultery, and eventu-
ally the present charge of perjury was ,preferred.
The former co-respondent, Townend. had been examined
at length on Friday, and emphatically denied the adul-
t. iry. On Saturday he underwent asearching cross-exa-
mination by Dr. genealy, and adhered to his evidence in
chief. He gave no the reason for not leaving with the
choir after practice that he did not choose to do so.
Mr. fluency, a surgeon, who had practised at Stoke
Mandeville about the time in question, and who, with
his wife, was on terms of intimacy with the Parting-
tons, was called as a witness for the prosecution, and
denied that any impropriety everoccurred between him
and Mrs. Partington. He had read, he said, the short-
hand writer's notes of the evidence given by the pri-
soner in the divorce suit as to an alleged impropriety
in the vestry on a particular occasion between the
witness and Mrs. Partington. He emphatically denied
it, and equally denied any other impropriety at any
time with her. lie acknowledged having received a
letter from Mr. Partington requesting hini to cease
visiting the house. After that he received messages
from her, though one Daneills, and used to speak toiler
if he met her in the streets, and walked with her if they
were going the. same way. Reply ing to questionsiin cross-
examination, he said he had given presents to Mrs. Par-
Lingual before his wiles d-ath. He also gave her presents
afterwards indefercnce to the express wish of his wife be-
fore her death. He had had neighbourly intercourse with
Mr. Partingtou on a variety of subject, some of them
being connected with the church. They had been very
intimate neighbours for about 14 years. On the pri-
soner being taken into custody on the warrant of Sir
Thomas Henry, he said it was a bad job, but he had
is thing to fee; as he had only ,p,Acen the truth.
This was the case for the prosecation.
-

Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, Q.C., summed up the evi-
dence for the prosecution, telling the jury they would
have to decide which of the parties they believed, for
perjury there undoubtedly was, and it would be their
duty to say on which ride it lay. They were asked to
believe that an adulterous intercourse occurred again
and again in a place notoriously open to observation,
and which the patties knew was so open. They were
asked to believe it, also, without evidence of any impru-
dent conduct being even no much as alleged against the
lady in vestion during the whole course ~f her married
life, lie ridiculed the notion that a marriedlady was not

to be at liberty to speak to a young gentleman now and
then on a matter so simple as the music of a village
choir, and, he mid, were it otherwise, there would be
an end to much that constituted the charm of ordinary
life. Ile glanced at the general improbabilities of the
case, and remarked, by the way, that the lady had
come out .4 the Divorce Court with her character un-
stsined. Ile contended that the whole dander had
arisen at first from the prurient imaginations of a parcel
of village boys, and had then been reps ated, distorted,
and magnified until it assumed at last the shape o a
villainous lie, from which the parties telling it could
not afterwards recede.
Dr. Kenealy, Q.C., next addressed the jury for the
defence at some length. He submitted that Mrs. Par-
tington had every reason on earth to deny this charge,
and that, on the other hand, the prisoner had no motive
for telling the story he had told except in the interests
of truth. The jury most remember that as a rule
people never made such charges without a reason.
He was an hornet country lad, of irreproachable
char, icter, and was of all men the least likely to
invent such a story. The wickedness' of perjury con-
sisted in saying that which never existed, and for pur-
poses of defamation. He contended that Mrs. Parting.
ton, in her position as the wife of the vicar of the parish,
ought to have conducted herself with exemplary pro-
priety and caution, but that her conduct, even taking
her own account, had been most indi,creet and sus-
picions. Ter meetings with Gurney and Townend
were unknown to her husband, and were concealed
from him, and the jary were asked to believe that
those proceeding were consistent with innocence. Ile
did not ask them to find that adultery had been coin.
nittied between these parties, but to say that such
things had occurred that the defendant might have
believed that the testimony he gave in the Divorce
Court on those points was true.
Mr. Charles Bennett, a farmer at Stoke Mandeville,
said he had been the guardian of the defendant for ten
years and had always known him as an honest, well.
conducted, and truthful lad. In answer to the Common
Serjeant, he admitted that he was surprised to hear the
account of the defendant's insulting conduct to Mrs.
Partington in the village, and that the defendant
never told bins anything of what he alleged he had
seen in the NEstry until some time afterwards.
Several other witnesses were called and gave the
prisoner a very good character.
The Common Serjeaut, in summing up, d.velt upon
the importance of the matter, not only to the parties
UWI.OI of misconduct, but to the defendant, and re-
marked th a the evidence given by the latter in the
Divorce Court was either entirely true or deliberately
and wilfully false, and could not be the result of mis-
take or inativerteece. In the course of a review of
the evidence given in the case, he-remarked that as to
the observation that Mrs. Partington and Mr. Townend
ought to have ceased to meet at the choir practices after
the nunours had begun to circulate in the
it was moot dilliult to settle whether the cease-
tin of that, as they alleged, innocent intercourse
would not have been turned by prurient imaginations
into a mere confession tof guilt. 'fhere was not a tittle
of evidence to nupport the imputations which had
been made against the witness Gurney, and the matter
was not material to the present case. 'Whatever might
be the curses of the metropolis or of other great cities,
there could be no doubt that in little villages, like Stoke
Mandeville, the greatest curse ref human society was that
of gortaip smug people who virtually had nothing
to do or to interest them but to meddle with the

affairs of others. Out of that gossip and prying curb
osity the charges, which might have had no other
foundation, had doubtless sprung; and the question
was whether the defendant, in giving most material
evidence on those charges in the Divorce Court, had
sworn certain things which were deliberately false.
The jury, after s few minutes' consultation, re.
turned a verdict of Ouitty.
Sentence on the defendant was postponed until an
indictment against another witness named Edwards
had been tried.

At the sitting of the Central Criminal Court, on Monday,
Mr. Serjeant Ballantine, with whom was Mr. E. J. Davis,
applied for a postponement until next session of the trial of
Truman Fleet Edwards for perjury alleged to have been
coniiinitted in the Divorce Court in the suit of " Partington
r. Partington and Townend." The learned serjeant said
that he had looked partially into the papers, but he lad not
been able to look into all the circumstances. He did not
think there would be any difficulty in Irls learned friend
consentirar to a noniponemert, as it was obvious the cereiree
must be that there was a mistake or misapprehension on
the part of tire person he deiendral, and as the verdict
given mr Saturday rehabilitated the character of Mrs.
Partington.
Mr. Fiizjames Stephens, who appeared for the pro-
secution with Mr. Poland and Mr. Beasley on behalf
of the Crown, said be would leave the matter entirely
in the hands of his lordship.
The Cunruon Serjeant said the result of the former
trial had removed any objection he might have had to
a postponement.
An adjournment to the August Sessions was agreed
to, and Mr. Stephen expreesed a hope that it would be
understood that the defence made no imputation upon
Mrs. Partington.
Mr. Serjeant Ballantine said that was clearly so.
The defence he had to put forward was that it was a
mistake, and he hoped to be able to show it.
The Common Serjeant said that, so far as he could
judge, the case of Edwards differed from that of
Tapping.
The prisoner Tapping was then called up for judg-
ment.
The Common-Serjeant, addressing the prisoner, said,
after a trial lasting several days in the Divorce Court,
the jury found a verdict negativing the charge of adul-
tery, thereby intimating that they entirely disbelieved
every word dieprisoner had saidouthat occasion. Again,
after two days' trial in this court, another jury had
arrived at the same c.mclusion, and had convicted him
of perjury. He entirely agreed in their verdict, and
there were many circumstances of gross aggravation in
the prisoner's case. He had absolutely been the
means of breaking up and destroying the home of an
, English clergyman, and had probably rendered him
, and his wife miserable for the rent of their days. A
worse crime of its kind could hardly be conceived. If
he had known or seen anything improper between the
wife and Mr. Townend, the prisoner had taken the very
worst course that could have been adopted, and the
result was that from rumours circulated by him in the
village, the character of the wife of a clergyman was
blasted and their home and happiness destroyed. No-
thing could be more terrible en its consequences or
wicked in the conception. He sought to pervert the
course of public justice by attempting to mislead the
jury who tried the cause in the Divorce Court, and so
to ruin the fair fame of a lady whose life had been
without reproach. That being so, it was highly neces-
sary, in the interests oi justice and for the security of
the public, that such conduct should be marked by the
strongest reprobation. lie therefore sentenced him to
he imprisoned and kept to hard labour in the House of
Correction for two years.