The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-22 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDO

must Commit robbery and everything that is contrary to
your wish.—l am, "AN ENEMY."
Lord AnrimEit, having ordered that the plea of the pri-
soner should be recorded, proceeded to pass sentence upon
him. The prisoner, his Lordship observed, had pleaded guilty
to the commission of a crime of the greatest magnitude and
enormity, and ono of which the Legislature had most pro-
perly marked its sense by the severity of punishment it had
annexed to it. Of what use was it that men should join to-
gether in the bonds of civil society, if there was no security
for life and property, if men could not sleep in peace and a
sense of security, but were to live in a state of constant ter-
ror and alarm? The conduct of the prisoner was calculated
to hold the district in which he lived in continual terror, and
it was not to be endured in a country in which law prevailed
that men should endeavour to compel others to do that which
might be against their interest or their duty by threats of
suffering from loss of property, or of submitting to death by
the most horrible torments. The offence was of a most atro-
cious character, and it might, indeed, almost be said, that
the sending of letters threatening to burn the property of the
parties to whom they were addressed was worse than the
putting the threat itself into execution, for when a man lost
his property by fire he at least knew the worst ; but he to
whom such threats were made was made to live in a state of
continual terror and alarm. Such a state of society was in.
tolerable, and in order that the well disposed part of society
might sleep not only in security, but in a sense of security
under a well-founded trust in the laws, and others be deterred
from a repetion of the offence of which the prisoner had ad-
mitted his guilt, he must receive the extreme measure of
punishment which the law had annexed to his crime, which
was, that he be transported beyond the seas for the remainder
of his life.
Allpress Catlin, aged 19, was indicted for stealing a sheep,
the property of Robert Dent.
Mr. Gunning was counsel for the prosecution ; the pri-
soner defended himself
This was a case of some singularity. The prosecutor is
steward to Lady Olivia Sparrow, and has an " off-hand"
farm some miles distant from his residence. The prisoner is
s labourer living in this neighbourhood. Early in the morn-
ing of the 26th of January the prisoner knocked at the door
of one of the Isle of Ely police, and on the policeman going
to his window the prisoner desired him to " get up and take
him into custody.' The officer at first thought the man
was drunk, or that ho had roused him from his slumbers for
the purpose merely of annoyance ; but the prisoner pro-
dueed a handkerchief covered with fresh blood, and
said he had been sheep-stealing ; " he was sure to be
taken, and he might as well give himself up at once."
Upon seeing and hearing this the policeman went down
stairs and secured him. The prisoner then stated that "he
had killed a sheep in Mr. Dent's forty acre piece at Ram-
say, and had cut off the hind-quarters, which he carried in
his handkerchief for four or five miles, when he got tired and
threw them into the river close by the Forty•foot-bridge."
He alsogave the officer the knife with which he had killed the
animal. Having left his prisoner in the custody of one of his
men, the policeman hurried off to the farm of Mr. Dent, and
in the field the name of which the prisoner had mentioned he
found the head, skin, and fore-quarter of a newly-slaughtered
sheep. He then got assistance and went to the place where
the prisoner said he had thrown the hind-quarters, and after
much dragging of the river he fished up one of the legs and
and a loin. The prisoner also confessed his guilt when he
was before the justices on the charge.
The prisoner in Court to-day loudly protested he was inno-
cent ; denied having killed the sheep ; said the knife which
was produced was not that with which the sheep had been slain,
and conducted himself in the deck in such a manner as to
induce the Learned Judge to inquire of the gaoler, if the
man's intellects were impaired. 'I he gaoler, who had known
him long and had him in his custody frequently, replied in
the negative.
Lord ABLNGER having in few words summed up the evi-
dence.
The jury found the prisoner Guilty.
Upon inquiry it appeared that he had been in Huntingdon
gaol alone on six previous occasions, and he was, therefore,
sentenced to be transported for 15 years. He stepped gaily
from the dock and bade the spectators " good by," leaving
them astonished at his uncommon impudence.
When he was before the magistrates upon the above charge,
he confeSsed that he was the person who had, a few nights
before the robbery in question, wantonly cut down a large
quantity of young trees of the prosecutor, and he had the
assurance to insist upon being paid 10 guineas by that gen-
tleman, being the reward which he had offered to any one
who would discover the offender; The grand jury found a
true bill against him for this offence also, but it was not
thought necessary for the ends of justice to try him upon it

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.
(YESTERDAY.)
MANSION-RO USE.

A person of gentlemanlike appearance and address,
named John Powell, was charged before Sir John Key,
who sat for the Lord Mayor, under the following odd
circumstances:—
Mr. James Walters, the proprietor of the Guildhall
Hotel and Coffee-house, stated that on the 14th of
February the prisoner came to the house, contracted a
bill to the amount of fourteen shillings and fivepence,
which he paid next day, and then he continued to con-
tract a bill until the 22d, when the amount reached
3/. 2s. 6d. The bill had been made up to the 28th, as
the prisoner's luggage was lying in his room, and no
notice had been given that the room might be otherwise
appropriated. On Wednesday night the prisoner after
an absence from the 22d of February, walked into the
coffee-room, and witness sent him in the bill and de-
manded immediate payment, in answer to which a check
for 31. 10s. was handed to him payable on the 23d
instant, which he refused to take. The waiter had
picked up a letter addressed to the prisoner, which pro-
-1 fessing to come from the prisoner's brother, was calcu-
lated to throw some light upon the subject.
The letter contained some observations in reprobation
of the prisoner's conduct.
Mr. Walters said that the prisoner had obtained ac-
commodation under false pretences, inasmuch as he
passed himself off at the Guildhall Coffee-house as Mr.
Whiteside, the celebrated Irish Counsel, who defended
lir. Duffy, one of the traversers in the Irish conspiracy
affair. The character thus assumed had the effect of
leading to a credit which would not have been given to
a person who had applied without introduction. The
discovery was made by a gentleman in the coffee-room,
who stated to witness that he knew Mr. Whiteside, and
that the prisoner certainly was not the distinguished
person he represented himself to be. That gentleman
had written to the Learned Counsel, and had received an
answer contradicting the prisoner's assertion.
'The prisoner said he could easily show the necessity
—the actual expediency—that he should assume the
name of Mr. Whiteside, at the same time that he denied
the correctness of the main features of the case, as repre-
sented by Mr. Walters. Ile had, he assured the Alder-
man, been a madman during the space of six
years, in consequence of an injury he had
sustained in the head by a fall from his horse.
He had been Coroner for the county of Kent, and there
were many respectable persons in London who could
bear testimony to the truth of all he had said and should
say. He had served his time under the gentleman to
whom Mr. Whiteside had been a pupil, and as some of
his family had thought proper to keep up, after his
complete recovery, the report that he continued mad, in
order to carry out their designs upon his property, he
was, he considered, justified in personating Mr. Whste-
side, or any other individual, with the view of escaping
the persecution either of mad doctors or Sheriff's officers.
If, in pretending that he was Mr. Whiteside, he had
offended against the law, it was more than he knew, for
certainly lie had not taken upon himself the part with
the intont of deriving any advantage from it beyond that
a hich related to his personal security, which was in
danger of being hazarded by the discovery of his real
name to his enemies.
Sir JOHN KEY told the prisoner that it appeared
from Mr. Walters' statement, that if he had not repre-
sented himself as Mr. Whiteside, the bill would not have
been allowed to run on, and asked whether the prisoner
was able to discharge the amount ?
The prisoner replied, that he could obtain it by send-
ing to a relation in town. He further stated, that he
had three children, and that he had been called away
from the Guildhall Coffee-house to the country on a
subject connected with their welfare ; and he de-
clared that he was never so much surprised as when,
upon re-entering the Coffee-house, he received a pe-
remptory order to pay the bill without delay, for he had
greatly amused the customers by his description of
what had taken place upon the trial of the Irish tra-
Versers.
Sir JOHN KEY said, he had no doubt that Mr. Walters
would be satisfied to let the matter drop upon receiving
the amount of the bill.
The prisoner assented to this proposition.
Mr. Walters said, it was not the insigaidcant amount
of the bill that led him to such a course as that he had
pursued on this occasion, but his apprehension that a
similar scheme of humbugging might be played off
at other houses.
The remarkable thing that appeared to strike those
who heard the case was, how on earth there could have
been got together a set of such flats as could, for a mo-
ment, have mistaken the poor creature at the bar for
the powerful and dignified advocate.
WORSHIP-STREET.
Wm. Brown, a well-dressed man, who formerly kept
a beer-shop in Nelson-street, Hackney-road, was brought
before Mr. Bingham for final examination, charged with
having been concerned in the commission of several
daring burglaries, that have been lately perpetrated in
the counties of Essex and Cambridge.
It appeared that a continued series of daring and sys-
tematic burglaries, which have occasioned considerable
alarm and excitement in the above counties, had taken
place at different times, extending over a period of seve-
ral months, and not the slightest clue to the discovery of
the perpetrators was obtained until about six weeks
since, when sSuperintendent Clarke, of the rural police,
succeeded in apprehending two notorious characters,
named Cuttress and Bennet, against whom a clear case
was established, on which they were both convicted
at the last Chelmsford Assizes, and were sentenced to
transportation for life. In consequence of certain
information that transpired on that occasion, the
Superintendent proceeded, in company with Sergeant
Brennan, on the 26th ult., to the house of the prisoner
in Nelson-street ; on searching which they discovered
an immense assortment of miscellaneous property, the
produce of different depredations, of which they took
immediate possession. Whilst they were prosecuting the
search, the prisoner escaped from the house, but he sur-
renderedtong wtehnhadti himself
in
nfb
Et bon s
:e broughtx
the
against
hi m.
to meet any
charges Miss Sarah Giblin, niece to Thomas Scott, Esq.,of
stated that, on the 25th of Ja-
nuary last, her uncle's house was broken into and robbed
of a large quantity of property. She identified the plated
candlestick, table-cloth, and the carving-knife, now pro-
duced, as the property of her uncle. Sometime before
the robbery, she saw the prisoner on the high road,
1 near her uncle's residence, in company with three other
men, one of whom she believed was Cuttress, the convict.
Algernon Herbert, Esq., of Ickleton, in Cambridge-
shire, identified a mahogany work-box, a writing desk,
and carpet-bag, which were stolen, with other articles,
from his house some time between December 23 and
January 27, last.
pb Singleton, vicar of ofofreßibabliraheaamter,endesonr
an a consider-
able quantity of plate and, otherproperty,
Cthairhmnbieri:edtg COI:f j stated
tesel4tthhaot his
f ous
December
lasti
of the value
of nearly 50L, was carried off. e two volumes pro-
duced, entitled "The Life of Christ," and " The Wake