The Sun.
London, England, 1849-11-09 00:00:00

MIDDLESEX SESSIONS, Nov. 8.

(Before Mr. Sergeant ADAMS, Assistant-Judge, and
a Bench of Magistrates.)
John Johnson, a young man of respectable appear-
ance, was indicted for stealing the lock of a door, of the
value of 103., the property of Ilenry French ; and in
a second count the prisoner was charged with having
entered a certain house with intent to steal.

Mr. HORRY appeared on behalf of the prisoner.
It appeared that the prisoner had been found in the
louse, No. 1, King's-square, Goswell-road, which at
,he time was untenanted, at two o'clock in the morn-

ing of the 234 of the last month. At the moment
he was discovered the prisoner was in the front par-
lour, and from the door of that room he had taken off
the lock. Upon his being searched a key was found
in his pocket which fitted the street door of the house;
and. he also had a screw-driver in his pocket. Prior
to this a kitchen copper, as well as a quantity of lead,

had been stolen from i the house.
Mr. IoRRY said that the line of defence he had
to take was, that on the day preceding the morning
on which the prisoner had been found in this house he
had been drinking to an unusual excess, and had
quitted his house, No. 117, Britannia-street, City-
road, at half-past twelve o'clock at night, for the
purpose of obtaining more liquor. He soon found,
however, that all the public-houses in his own neigh-
bourhood were closed, and he went strolling on until
he arrived at Goswell-street, where he expected to
find some house open. Whilst looking about he
observed several men leave the house in which he had

ultimately been found, and fancying at the moment
that it was a house wherein his sister lived, he entered
it, but had not been there many minutes before a
policeman made his appearance and took him into
custody. On the part of the prisoner he was
instructed to say that he was a most respectable
young man, and for five years had the management
of the Mogul Tavern, in Drury-lane, and had also
been in business on his own account as the landlord
of the King's Head, in Gravel-lane, Southwark.
He accounted for the pr Boner having had the key
which had been found upon him in his possession in
the following manner :—The prisoner took some pre
mises at No, 41, Munster-street, Regent's-park, of a
Mr. Frew, a baker in Marylebune-street, upon which
he had laid out 1801. in fitting them up as a beer-
shop, but the publicans in the neighbourhood bad me-
morialised the Earl of Carlisle as First Commissioner

of the Woods and Forests, as the property was
Crown property, and the result had been that the
Noble Earl had refused to permit a beer- shop to be
opened in that locality. Upon this the prisoner com-
menced an action against the landlord to recover
back the money he had laid out upon the premises,
and had retained the key, under the impression that
so long as it was in his custody he was in the legal
possession of the house. The prisoner had a wife and
child, the former being the daughter of a barrister,
whilst her brother had married the prisoner's sister.
The truth was that in this matter the prisoner, when
in a state of intoxication, had gone into the house in
question.
The landlord of the prisoner now gave him a most
excellent character, and went on to state that on this
particular night he had been " extremely tipsy," and
had gone out for the purpose of purchasing some
spirits. The house in which the prisoner had been
found was about three-quarters of a mile from Bri-
tannia street.
The Learned JUDGE, in leaving the case to the
jury, said it was somewhat strange—and that was the
awkward fact in the case—that no satisfactory expla-
nation had been given in respect of the possession of
the key. It was, moreover, not a little singular that a
man should in the dead of the night, and in a state of
intoxication too, stroll by accident into a house where
he was found taking the locks off the doors, and that
in his pocket should be a key which would open the
street-door of that particular house. In his opinion
it was preposterous to imagine that a drunken man
would wander three-quarters of a mile from his own
home at such a time of night for the purpose of get-
ting something more to drink. The jury had heard
the evidence, however, and if they thought that the
prisoner had removed the lock with the intention of
, carrying it away, they would find him guilty.
Die jury gave a verdict of Guilty.
The Learned JUDGE then said there could be no
doubt but that the prisoner, however respectable he
might have been, had fallen into reduced circum-
stances, and had also, he feared, become an associate
of those who were not the most honest persons in the
world.
The prisoner denied the latter inference.
The Learned JUDGE said he would either postpone
passing sentence, in order that further inquiries might
be made about the prisoner and his circumstances, or
he would at once pass the sentence of four months'
imprisonment, with hard labour, upon him. He would
do just that which the prisoner wished.
The prisoner, after considering a minute, said, " I
may as well have it now."—(Laughter.)
The Learned JUDGE thereupon sentenced him to
four months' imprisonment, with hard labour.
John Fitzgibbon, alias Maloney, a deserter from the
10th Hussars, was indicted under the following cir-
cumstances :
The prosecutor, who spoke with the utmost diffi-
culty, in consequence of the frightful effect of the
injury he had received, stated that upon the 31 inst.
he was at the Orange public-house at Colney-hatch
with several friends in the same room with the
prisoner, who was a stranger to them, when in the
course of conversation he assumed a very dictatorial
manner towards them, and in the end demanded
silence that an Irishman should sing. The prose-
cutor at once said that he would endeavour to obtain
silence, when the prisoner accused him with interfer-
ing with what did not concern him, and on the in-
stant pulled off his coat and .began an attack upon
him. The prosecutor resisted this violence as well as
he could, but in the struggle he was thrown, and the
prisoner fell upon him, uttering at the moment a loud
yell, but quickly rose again with his face much
smeared with blood, and calling the attention of the
company to what he was about to do, then spat out of
his mouth something, saying, "D. your eyes, look
there." The prosecutor was then assisted to rise,
when it was found that the whole of his under lip had
been bitten off. It was this lip which the prisoner
had spat out of his mouth. The company were so
much disgusted with the act, that they on the instant
took him into custody, and eventually handed him
over to a policeman.
The lip, which had been preserved in spirits, was
now produced.
The prisoner, in his defence, said that he was drunk
at the time, and did not know what he was doing,
but that as it had been sworn that he had done this
act, he supposed it was true.
The jury returned a verdict of Guilty.
The Learned JUDGE said that he had never heard
of a more savage, or ruffianly, or cowardly act. It
was even worse than the gouging system which had
been practised in America.
A sergeant of the 10th Hussars here stepped for-
ward, and said that the prisoner was a deserter from
that regiment, and that when he was released from
the imprisonment which he 'night have to suffer under
the present conviction, he would have to undergo a
court-martial trial for his desertion.
The Learned JUDGE then sentenced the prisoner
to imprisonment and hard labour for six months,
adding that he was not at all sorry to hear that a
man who was such a disgrace to humanity would
eventually be further punished by the military au-
thorities.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

BOW-S7'REAT.

An elderly woman, named Rochester, alias Ann
Gately, was charged with obtaining 2s. 6d. from the
Rev. Henry Hutton, Rector of St. Paul's, Covent-
garden, by false and fraudulent pretences. Another
woman, named Robson, was charged as an accom-

plice.
The system by which the imposition was effected
is very generally practised by the mendicants of the
metropolis. A short woman, answering the descrip-
tion of the second prisoner, called at a lodging house
in Hart-street, Covent-garden, about a week ago, and
inquired for a person by some name invented for the
occasion. She was informed that no such person
lived there. She then questioned the landlady as to
the lodgers in the second floor back, pretending that
she was in search of a poor family, and fancied that
they resided there. The landlady immediately gave
her every particular as to her second-floor lodger,
who was a widower named Lorrnan, having been only
recently left with a family of small children, the
eldest of whom was a girl of fourteen. Upon get
ting this information the woman disappeared, and
communicated the details to Ann Gately, who usually
dressed as a widow, and on Tuesday, the 6th inst. ,
waited upon the Rev. H. Hutton, at his residence in Hen-
riett a-street, to ask for some relief in the name of Lor-
man. She stated that he was her son-in-law, and
had been lately deprived of his wife ; that he had six
young children, and that the eldest daughter had been
suffering from an attack of the cholera; that it was