The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-18 00:00:00

MIDDLESEX SESgONS.—Dec. 17.

(Before the Assistant-Judge.)
Maly Newell, servant, wag indicted for stealing
a box containing a coat, cther articles of wearing
apparel, and a watch, the property of Mr. W. John
Barker, her master, and also other property, belong-
ing to a gentleman named Heath, who lodged in
Mr. Barker's house.

Mr. Cooper was counsel for the prorccutiou, Mr.
I)ickie for the defence.

Mr. Cooper, in opening the case, said it was one
of a novel, or rather romantic nature, and when the
offence imputed to the prisoner was committed it
obtained a good deal of passing notoriety. It would
be proved in evidence that the prisoner entered the
service of the prosecutor, a surveyor, residing at 29,
Beasborough-gardens, Pimlico, in March last. On
the 7th of November the prosecutor went out in the
morning as usual, and returned in the afternoon.
In the evening he and Mrs. Barker went out, and
on his return he found the door locked, and receiv-
ing no answer to the ring of the bell he went to his
next door neighbour's, and got through his house
into his own. He found the place completely ran-
sacked, a poker with hair upon it, and smeared
with what seemed to be blood, a window smashed,
and the prisoner, whom he had left in charge
of the house, gone. The inference he deduced from
this was that the house had been robbed, and the
servant murdered. The plate was packed up in a
parcel as if ready for removal. The prisoner was
traced by the police to Yarmouth, where she was
found in the guise of a man, wearing her master's
clothes and courting a young woman as her sweet-
heart, no suspicion being for a moment entertained
as to her sex. She had cropped her hair short,
smoked cigars, took the woman " he" was courting
to the theatre, marched about the Marine-parade
with a Spanish cap on, and altogether the case was
one of the most strange that ever came before the
Court. It would be suggested, he believed, that
she was not of sound mind ; but if the jury were to
acquit her on that ground, she would be subjected,
as a matter of course, to a far more severe punish-
ment than if convicted simply of stealing her mas-
ter's goods, but that would be for the jury to deter-
mine.

The prosecutor said'he lived at 29, Bessborough.
gardens, and on the 7th of Nov., on going out, he
left Mrs. Barker at home with the prisoner, his
servant. The prisoner said, before he left, that a
strange man had called and said be wanted to re-
pair the window blinds. He returned in the after-
noon, and afterwards went out again, leaving the
prisoner in care of the house, her sister being then
with her. At 10 he returned, and knocked and
rang, but was not answered, and got into his house
through a neighbour's. He found the plate packed
up in a damask curtain in the drawing-room, and
the place in confusion. Mr. Heath's room was all
in disorder, and his property gone. He stumbled
over a poker covered with a liquid resembling blood
and matted with hair. The back window was
broken, and the fragments of glass were on the slates
below, which showed that instead of any one hav•
ing got in from the outside it must have been done
by some one inside. The property missed consisted
of coats, shoes, cravats, handkerchiefs, a bracelet,
opera glass, a watch, £2 in money, value altogether
about £67, of which £4O worth belonged to Mr.
Heath. Ho called in the police. A panel had been
cut' out of the second floor bedroom door with a pair
of scissors and one of his razors. The razor was
found in a drawer, jagged like a saw, and the point
of one of the scissors blades was found at the bot-
tom of the door, it having been broken off.
Cross-examined—All the clothing taken away
was men's. He received a good character with the
prisoner from a very respectable tradesman in Ebury-
street. She had at first LlO a year, which lie was
' about to increase to ,Ell when she went away.
Inspector Humphrey, B, produced the property,
and described the state of the house when he went
to it. He was sure that the window must have
been broken inside, as the glass had been knocked
out, not in. The poker was broken, and he found
some hair in a pail in the passage, which was
sprinkled with red.
Michael John Sheen, 272 B, said he received in-
formation of the robbery,‘and found a cabman who
had taken a young man from the house to the
Eastern Counties Railway, with luggage, boxes,
carpet-bag, and a large portmanteau. He traced
the luggage to Yarmouth, and there he was directed
to No. 10, 136-row, where a supposed young man
had taken lodgings, it being a lodging-house. In
the parlour he found ono of the boxes tied up in
canvas as a settee; it contained clothes, and a quan-
tity of hair exactly corresponding with the pri-
soner's and that found on the poker. On searching
he found a bandbox with a hat in it. The landlady
told him that the young man had gone to the
Marine-parade. In three-quarters of an hour the
young man came to his lodgings smoking a cigar.
The witness said to prisoner that he was an officer,
and charged her with being Mary Ann Newell,
late a servant of Mr. Barker's, whose house had
been robbed. She said nothing. As she was in
men's clothes, he did not wish to do anything in-
delicate, but ho must search her pockets; and on
doing so he found £2,three half-crowns, two foreign
coins, a pipe from a coat pocket, a watch from the
waistcoat, and she told him where a missing pin
was. The clothes she was wearing were Mr.
Heath's. She said the cap she bought at Ipswich,
and wished it to be given to her brother.
Cross-examined—The prisoner, he had been in-
formed, had been in Cambridge Hospital. When he
took her she had no false whiskers or moustache.
She came to the door in a jaunty sort of way, after
her walk on the Marine-parade. Her landlady said
he was a nice sort of a young man_ (Laughter.)
Mr. Heath was called, and identified the articles
belonging to him. They were worth about £4O.
Some questions were put to him which the As-
sistant Judge thought had nothing to do with the
case, but the witness was allowed to say he had seen
her with the portrait of an actress in male attire.
Inspector Humphrey said he found among the
property a pocket book containing theatrical memo-
randa in the prisoner's writing, but of no import-
ance, and it did not relate to the case.
The defence set up was in substance that the pri-
soner had a kind of monamania for the romantic,
and though not exactly insane was at the time she
did this under some idea that she was playing the
part of a heroine in some melodrama. She was of
very weak mind, and her grandfather and father
both died insane. The learned counsel argued that
she had no felonious intention, as must be inferred
from the fact that though she packed up the plate,
she did not take it with her, and that as far as was
known at present, nothing she, took was missing
but one pocket handkerchief. It was neither mad-
ness nor felony, but a case of diseased mind; she
was not in constitutional health. Altogether it was
a case one did not hear of in a lifetime, and was one
more in illustration of the saying that "Truth is
stranger than fiction." Whatever might have been
her motive at the time, she had not gone to a mar-
ket to dispose of the property. It was all recovered,
and he submitted that, it was a case in which the
jary could, upon the evidence, safely come to the
conclusion that at the moment she did this she was
under some temporary delusion, and on that ground
acquit her.
Evidence was then given of the facts stated in
the defence, and after a lengthy summing up by his
lordship,
The jury found the prisoner guilty of the felony.
His Lordship, after some remarks upon the
prisoner's conduct, in which, ho said, the jury could
not have come to any other conclusion, sentenced
her to 18 months' hard labour.
Several other cases were disposed of.