The Sun.
London, England, 1851-01-06 00:00:00

CRIMINAL COURT-(THIS DAY.)
The January sessions cf the Central Criminal Court
W a ; opened this morning before the. Right Hon. the Lord
Mayor, the Right Hon. the Recorder, the Common Ser-
geant, Mr. Alderman Gibbs, Mr. Alderman Hunter,
M. Alderman Lawrence, and Sheriffs Carden and Hcdig-
kinson.

The calendar contains the names of 109 prisoners, in-
cluding, among others, 8 charges of burglary, 4 of cut-
ting and wounding with intent, 7 of embezzlement, 3
of forgery, 1 of manslaughter, 28 of larceny, and 1
of rape.
The grand jury having been sworn,
The RECORDER proceeded to deliver his charge. He
said although so short a time bad elapsed since the last ses-
sion there were unfortunately a considerable number of
prisoners for trial. He was, however, glad to be able to
congratulate the grand jury once more upon the fact that
the calendar did not present many cases of a very serious
character, with such exceptions as he should presently al-
lude to; and again he was happy to tied that the word
" murder" did not occur in the list of offences which
would be brought before them. With regard to the
character of the offences generally, cases of great
violence and cruelty were in small number, and, us was
the case generally at this particular session of the court,
the charges consisted of what the law termed larceny.
Among these last were cases of common theft and theft
from the person; and it was a circumstance which he
was happy to observe, that the number of cases of theft
from the person had considerably diminished, a fact
which he was willing to attribute to the vigilance of the
police. There was another class of thefts, namely, by
servants from their masters and mistresses, and he was
happy to say that there were fewer of that class
in the calendar than almost at any former
period. With respect to that class of of-
fences, something that was supposed to have fallen
from him on a former occasion had been so entirely mis-
understood that perhaps the grand jury would permit
him to say what his impression was upon that subject.
He was supposed to have said by some persons that there
was a general practice of hiring domestic servants with-
out inquiring into their characters, and of seeking to
obtain their services at low wages; and the natural con-
sequence was that such servants robbed their employers,
and that the circumstance of their receiving no wages
palliated, and even excused, the offence. Ho was cot
conscious of using any language which he thought would
bear that construction, and he trusted he never uttered
anything so absurd. All that he meant to say was with
the view of preventing the commission of crimes of that
kind and not their punishment. All who had
watched from time to time the proceedings of that
court would have observed that the offence of stealing
from employers was uniformly punished with rigour and
severity. What he did say, or meant to have said,
was this—that there were cases which had come before
this Court where, undoubtedly, the remuneration given
tothe servants was so small that the parties were exposed
to greater temptation in consequence of the extremely
small wages that were given for their services ; and
that by giving servants more reasonable remuneration
for their services, that class of crimes would probably
be diminished. Domestic servants were a class who
had least of all to complain; but when he found that
young women were found serving as maids of all work
at ls. or Is. 6d. a week, and having to find themselves in
everything except board and lodging; and when he
found that many shopmen and errand boys were hired
at a very low rate of wages, and in some cases with no
money wages at all; and more especially, ae in one case
which had recently come before the Court, where no
money wages had been given, and where the servant
was entrusted with money belonging to his employer, he
(the Recorder) said, and he said again, that such a state
of things was an exposing of them to temptation. The
Learned Recorder then referred to two cases of man-
slaughter in the calendar, and then proceeded. The
only other case he had to refer to was one
which had attracted a great deal of public
notice. It was a charge against two persons
in a better class of life, named Sloane, for the
cruel treatment of a child or young woman intrusted
to their service. If the charges which were likely to be
made against those persons were sustained, there was no
doubt that their atrocity would well justify the indigna-
tion that had been raised in the public mind. But it was
their and his duty to take care that the even tenor of
justice was not disturbed by passion or prejudice. They
must never lose sight of that principle of the English
law which, entitled every man accused of an offence to a
fair trial, and bound every man interested in the adminis-
tration of the law not to prejudge a case, If the charge
was made out then was the time when indig-
nation might fairly be expressed ; but the
grand jury and himself were there to administer
the law, and to speak their minds, as far as they could,
unbiassed and unaffected by the indignation which the
nature of the charge itself might excite. He did not
know exactly the form in which the charge would be
brought before the grand jury, but he had reason to
believe that those two persons would be jointly charged
with having taken this young woman into their service,
and failed to provide her with necessary food for her
maintenance; secondly,- they would be charged with
various assaults, with endeavouring to force her to
swallow the excrement from her own person, with ex-
posing her to cold, with making her work without suffi-
cient clothing, with striking her with a shoe on the hand
at various times. With regard to the first charge,
that of failing to provide her with necessary food, there
was no doubt that in point of law if any person took
another iuto his service of so tender an age as to be un-
able to provide for herself or himself., under those cir-
cumstances the law imposed upon the master or mistress
the absolute duty of providing sufficient food for the
maintenance and preservation of their servant. If that
was omitted and death ensued the offence would be
either manslaughter or murder, according to the pecu-
liar circumstances of the case. If death did not ensue,
as was happily the fact in this case, it was unquestion-
ably a misdemeanour at common law, for which
the parties might be indicted and punished.
Some little difficulty occurred in this case
in consequence of the husand and wife being
joined together in the indictment. If it should appear
in this case that the husband had not supplied the wife
with the means of giving sustenance to the child, it
would be difficult to convict her of such offence; but he
(the Recorder) was informed by reading the depositions
that no such defence as that was likely to be made, as
there were provisions on the premises, to which the
wife had access. A further question might arise, how
far she acted under the coercion of her husband;
but it had been held that as regarded assaults and mis-
demeanours the wife might be indicted jointly with the
husband if they concurred in the same act. With regard
to the other injuries, the forcing into her mouth the
filth from her own person, and the forcing her to do her
work without sufficient clothing, those were acts as well
of commission as of omission, and they were offences for
which the husband and wife might be jointly indicted.
If the servant in this case was a child of tender years,
and unable to provide for herself sufficient food
for her maintenance, she would Le justified
in indicting her master and mistress for
starving or assaulting her whilst she was in their service.
The Learned Recorder founded this opinion upon a
dictum delivered by Mr. Justice Lawrence in 1797.
Having charged the grand jury to dismiss from their
minds whatever they knew of this from their intercourse
out of doors, the Learned Gentleman then remitted them
to their duties.
IThe grand jury then retired, and the Court proceeded
to swear the petty jury.