The Sun.
London, England, 1847-12-11 00:00:00

ESQ.

This case was the same as the above, and the ruling
of the Court was, therefore, held to be applicable to both.
Convictio❑ quashed.
This decision, if we remember rightly, is in direct op-
position to that delivered a week or two since at the
London Sessions by the Recorder.

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
WORSHIP-STREET.
A young married woman, named Elizabeth Gardner,
was charged with violently assaulting and threatening to
stab her husband, Henry Gardner, with a knife.
The husband, who was evidently in great apprehen-
sion of the prisoner, though a very little woman, stated
that he had only been married to his wife a short time
when he had the misfortune to get into some trouble,
which led to his being confined for a considerable period
in the House of Correction, and that about a fortnight

after his incarceration commenced he received a letter

from the prisoner, in which, while protesting the most
devoted affection for him, she stated, that the

whole of their goods having bee❑ seized upon, she had
had been compelled to apply for support to the parish
officers, who had afforded her two nights' shelter in the

workhouse, and that, as she had received an offer of
- -

protection from a male friend of the witness's until he
was liberated, she hoped he would not object to her ac-
cepting it. lie felt very indignant at such an extra-
ordinary communication, and refused to answer it, the
result of which was, that the prisoner took his silence
for consent, and although she had accepted the other
man's offer, and lived with him as his wife, she never-
theless wrote him five or six other notes (which he

handed up to the bench), all of them filled with the most
affectionate protestations, and in the last of which, re-
ceived the day before he was liberated, she expressed her
intention to quit the other man, and meet witness next
morning on his discharge at the prison-gate. Punctual
to the moment he found the prisoner there to receive
him, when she pointed out so forcibly the destitution
she had been thrown into by his imprisonment, and
so pathetically appealed to him for forgiveness, that,
thinking she bad been driven to misconduct
by necessity, he reluctantly agreed to receive
her, and accompanied her to some lodgings she
had hired in Spitalfields. There, however, some cir-
cumstances came to his knowledge which induced him
to revoke his resolution, and he expressed to her his
determination never again to acknowledge her ; upon
which she became dreadfully excited, smashed the win-
dows to pieces, held him by the throat till he was nearly
black in the face, kicked him furiously on several parts
of his person, and finally declaring that she was resolved
no other woman should possess him if she could not,
and that she would " finish" him to prevent it, seized a
table-knife, and attempted or threatened to stab him
with it. A violent struggle ensued between them, in
which he was obliged to use her roughly to escape her
violence, and having succeeded at length in wresting
the weapon from her, he applied to this court for pro-
tection.
A woman named Montgomery, who was present at
the time of the contest, described it in nearly the same
terms as the husband, but added, that the latter struck
his wife two very severe blows across the face in the
course of it.
When called upon for her defence, the prisoner, who
had been sobbing hysterically from the commencement,
said that although she knew she had so acted that she
could scarcely expect to be forgiven, she had been forced
to act as she had done, as her husband returned her no
answer to her letters, she was in a state of the utmost
destitution while he was in prison, and had no home to
go to or friends to receive her. The instant the com-
plainant was liberated she hastened to meet him, and
begged for his pardon, which she thought he had granted
her; but he suddenly changed his mind, and ordered her
out of the house, and told her to go to the workhouse,
an order that so hurt her feelings that, in her despair,
she scarcely knew what she did, but she certainly did
not attempt to injure him until he had several times
struck her cruelly.
The complainant expressed a wish that his wife should
not be severely punished, but he wanted security from
her uncontrollable temper, and the Magistrate, therefore,
after forcibly animadverting upon her conduct, ordered
her to put in two substantial sureties for her peaceable
behaviour for the next six weeks—a virtual sentence of
imprisonment for that time, as she could not find them.
On hearing the decision the prisoner rushed towards
her husband, flung herself upon her knees, and implor-
ingly entreated his forgiveness, but the complainant was
inexorable, and it was with the greatest difficulty that
Alderman, the gaoler, could release her husband from
her grasp, she clung to him with such tenacity.
LAMBETH.

John Simpson, alias Scott, and Mary Ann Simpson,
alias Taylor, who have been in custody for nearly a
month on a charge of stealing a silver tea service and va-
rious articles of jewellery, of the value of 1001., the pro-
perty of Mr. John Edwards, a gentleman residing in
Camberwell-green, were placed at the bar before Mr.
Norton for final examination.

In addition to the evidence already published in The
Sun, from which it appeared that the property had been
stolen from the bedroom of Mr. Edwards on the evening
of Sunday, the 31st of October last, while the family
were at church, and two days after was seen in the pos-
session of the prisoners, one of whom, the woman, had
been in the service of Mr. Edwards. _ _ _

The first witness yesterday was Mr. John Peters, a
superintendent of police at Kidderminster, who deposeel
that between the hours of 11 and 12 o'clock on the night
of Friday, the 12th of last month, he apprehended the
prisoners at the Wheatsheaf Inn, Kidderminster. He
found them in bed together, and told them that he took
them in custody on a charge of stealing a quantity of
plate and other property, belonging to Mr. Edwards, of
Camberwell•green, upon which the male prisoner ex-
claimed, " Well, I suppose we'll be both sent over the
water for it." The woman said nothing. He (wit-
ness) told the servant at the inn to examine carefully
the bed in which the prisoners bad been, and on the
following day he received the mourning-ring he then
produced, from Harriet Hill, now present. Ho also re-
ceived from the mother of the female prisoner eight
rings, two brooches, a pair of ear-drops, a broken seal,
and a small silver knife, which she said she had received
from her daughter, all of which were identified by Mr.
Edwards as his property, and stolen from his house.
In reply to a question from Mr. NORTON, the witness
said ho had known the female prisoner from childhood,
and was not aware that she had been before guilty of any
offence.
Hill, chambermaid at the Wheatsheaf Inn,
Kidderminster, stated that on the night of Friday, the
12th of last month, about eleven o'clock, the prisoners
came to her master'
s house and engaged Theyabed.otn
retired to rest almost inamediatelyaae r, but were n
the house more than half
an hour whensior being
that
Mno person
takenPeterso
u t
of the bed-room witness locked n their
e
came and apprehended them. o
it up
had access to it until the following day, when she went
there,
and
o to that which
nexamini
she had seen the male ngthe
bed she found a mourning-
ring similar
pri-
soner wear on the night before.
Inspector Campbell, in reply to the questions of the
Magistrate, said he had communicated with the autho-
rities at Liverpool, where the prisoner had been three
' times convicted, and where he was at present charged
with a daring attempt at highway robbery, and that he
I expected the presence of an officer at the Old Bailey to
t prove these facts.