The Sun.
London, England, 1860-04-10 00:00:00

MIDDLESEX SESSIONS,

, April 9.

♦ _
•
The April Quarter Sessions commenced this morn-
ing at the Guildhall, Westminster. before Mr, Bod-
kin, Assistant-Judge, Mr. Payne, deputy, and the
following full bench of magistrates :—Mr. H. H.
Harwood, the Baron de Bliss, Mr. Stilwell, Mr. D.
Fletcher, Sir C. D. Crossley, Mr. Parbury, Mr.
Marshall, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Rankine, Mr. Beet-
ham, Mr. Baylis, Mr, Bashford, Mr. Hogarth, Mr.
Burslem, Mr. Healey, and Mr. Faulconer.

The calendar contains the names of no fewer than
114 prisoners, of whom 99 are committed for felony,
and 15 for misdemeanour.

The Assistant-Judge delivered the charge to the
grand jury.
George King, 16, and Samuel Barnes, 15, were
convicted of stealing a card of rings, the property
of Jas. Peacock, from a case in which they were ex-
posed for sale in front of a shop in New Oxford-
street.
Foulsham, the officer of the Westminster prison,
said these boys, though so young, had been repeat-
edly convicted. There were six convictions against
King and four against Barnes.
The Assistant-Judge sentenced each of the pri-
soners to two years' hard labour, and said they
would be recommended to Parkhurst.
Edward Farrell,lB, and Dennis Kennedy, 14, were
convicted of stealing a handkerchief from a gentle-
man at Temple-bar.
Foulsham stated that there were 13 previous
convictions against Farrell, who, without exception,
was the worst boy they ever had to deal with in
Westminster prison, and one against Kennedy.
The mother of the latter said she had five sons,
and none of them had ever been in prison at all.
Foulsham said that was a very false assertion, as
the boy Kennedy and a brother were in prison at the
same time for attempting to pick pockets.
The Assistant-Judge sentenced Farrell to six
years' penal servitude, and Kennedy to three years
at the reformatory for this county at Feltham.
William Taylor, 22, was indicted for stealing a
coat in the dwelling house of William Dawsey
Belby.
The door of the house being left open for a mo-
ment after the prosecutor got home the prisoner
walked into the passage and put on a coat which
Mr. Belby had just taken off and hung up. He
was observed from an upper window to leave the
front gate, and from a description given of him to
police-constable 100 N, he was apprehended in
company with another who was a known thief, while
they were being watched going about from house to
house in an outlying district trying parlour
windows.
The prisoner was found guilty, and a conviction
for highway robbery was put in against him.
The Court sentenced him to three years' penal
servitude.
Charles Hansford, 18, and Frederick Barnes, 23,
were indicted—Hansford for
.stealing, and the other
for feloniously receiving a quantity of beef, the pro-
perty of Messrs. Cover, butchers, of St. James's-
street, the employers of the first-named prisoner.
Mo. Cooper appeared for the prosecution ; Mr.
Sleigh defended Hansford.
The meat was taken by Hansford and concealed
in a cart-house, and Barnes, who had been mixed
up in the transaction, was charged with receiving
it with a guilty knowledge, but the jury acquitted
him:
Hansford was found guilty, and sentenced to
nine months' hard labour.
Thomas Wyborn, 26, was indicted for stealing a
quantity of boots and shoes, value £4O, the pro-
perty of J. Hodges, his master. He pleaded guilty.
Mr. Cooper appeared on his behalf. The prosecu-
tor carried on business as a boot and shoe manufac-
turer, &c., in Tottenham-court-road, and there was
reason to believe that the prisoner, who had been
in his service between six and seven years, had been
L plundering him during the greater part of that
• time; £4O worth of property was found in his bed-
room by the policeman in the case, Lambert 68 E.
The Assistant-Judge said it was a very bad case,
and the Court must pass a sentence that would ope-
rate as a warning to servants that, however long
and successfully they may rob their employers, de-
tection will follow and punishment fall upon them.
The sentence upon him was 18 months' hard labour.
A watch which prisoner purchased some months
ago was given up to the prosecutor by order of the
Court.

Thomas Martin, 28, groom, was indicted for
fraudulently obtaining four brushes from Thomas
Burman, with intent to defraud.

The prisoner had been a helper in Lord Campbell's
stables at Stratheden-house, and after he had left
that service he went and obtained these brushes,
representing that he was still employed at the Lord
Chancellor's stables, and that the brushes were for
use there.
The prisoner admitted the offence, but urged that
he had done it through trouble and distress.
The Court said, under the circumstances a very
lenient sentence would answer the ends of justice,
and sentenced the prisoner to two months' hard
labour.
Fred. Frazer, 27, was indicted for having stolen
two coats, value £3, the property of John Hodges.
Mr. M'Donnell was counsel for the prosecution ;
Mr. Sleigh defended the prisoner.
There were some very curious circumstances in
th:s case. There was no doubt that on the 26th of
November last two coats were stolen from 1, How-
ley-villas, Paddington, and that the two coats now
produced were the same. On the Bth of March
the prisoner was taken into custody with another
man on a different charge, and in his possession the
officer, Sergeant Boden, 11 D, who took him, found
these two coats, which he had that very day
redeemed, and which he pawned the very day they
were stolen at Mr. Dobree's in Gilbert-street, Ox-
ford-street. He was therefore charged with having
stolen them, and the defence was that on the day
of the robbery the prisoner was out with his bro-
ther, who is an actor, distributing bills for a benefit
for the latter, when they called at a wardrobe shop
in Devonshire-street, Lisson-grove, kept by a Mrs.
Jones, for the purpose of leaving a bill for exhibi-
tion in each of her windows, whn a man came in,
and offered to sell her the coats, asking 255. for
them. Mrs. Jones did not purchase them, as she
could not then spare the money, and the prisoner,
thinking he could catch a bargain, offered to buy
them, and ultimately the stranger agreed to take
21s. for them, and being short of money himself,
the prisoner went and pawned them, and thus by
an extraordinary coincidence he redeemed them
on the very night he was taken, and pawned them
on the very day they were stolen.
Mrs. Jones and the prisoner's brother were exa-
mined, and they deposed to these facts in the main,
but they differed materially in their description of
the stranger, and by way of fixing the date Mrs.
Jones said she had brought the playbills which
were left at her shop by the brothers on that par•
titular day, but she had unfortunately lost them
while she had been in attendance at the court; but
the brother said he was sure of the date, as his
benefit was on the 29th, and this occurred on the
preceding Saturday.
The jury, after some deliberation, found the pri-
soner Guilty.
The police-sergeant then stated, in answer to
the Court, that he and another officer, White, 310,
were induced to watch the prisoner and another
wan, from observing them loitering suspiciously
about houses in Upper Berkeley-street and Port-
man-square, and in Seymour-place the prisoner
was seen to unlace his boots and go stealthily
down an area, the other man keeping watch.
In a few minutes the prisoner rushed up the
steps, he taking one side of the street and his
companion the other, the officers in pursuit. On
the prisoner being taken he said he had only been
to see a girl who lived there, Emily Dorman, and
the sergeant said, " Well, you can easily prove that,
if it be true." The prisoner said, " Well, take me
back." " No," said the officer, " you take me back ;
show me the house;" and the prisoner, having mis-
taken the right one, went to three before he came
ttohtlbiau.ettriew Nri;his,e,re lie had paid his visit. The prisoner
said to the butler, " Now, didn't I come here and
ask
e t
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but y Dormanyou
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had 'n'
ol? e
businesss," a n swe r
here,d
and no such person lives here and never did." On
tbluletlfiero,otroi.tslhiligepi:y found a key, with which it seemed
the kitchen
adsokouerrpliNsle,becyn, opened, and when the
found the prisoner in the
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him then could notetbllvea. s obeyed that he had served
prisoner, a tall,
servitude, but the officer who had
fouTrhe
unmusculare.h young man, said
buthe could
latterlyn o t
hdeny a
had got
hains honest aract er had been bad,
living
libhyo
policesitting
with a brother and others to artists.
clogged him because they knew he had been in
trouble, and because he had lived with a
young
woman whom he took away from one of them, notg
now in the force, who left his own wife to live with
her, and it was he and others that had put these
officers on to him out of spite and to get him out of
the way.
The officer said the woman was a notorious thief.
The Assistant Judge said if the prisoner's state-
meritswhich it was impossible to believe,
een in consequence of any spite
prisoner and his brother went
it
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a could
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nde boughtreaen theth a coats,
wentno r couldd ew
the area. He concurred in the verdict, but should
direct inquiries to be made, and, if the result of
these were such as he anticipated, it would be the
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