The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-03-29 00:00:00

CHARGE TO THE GRAND JURY.

In his charge to the Grand Jury, his Lordship said :
Three months have scarcely elapsed since I had the honour
of presiding in this court, and then a calendar was laid
before me containing the names of 120 prisoners. I find
you now have 118 prisoners to be tried at this assize, a
melancholy instance of the prevalence of crime in this
part of the country, and this, too, at a period when, it is
said, South Lancashire is more prosperous than usual—
when labour is abundant and wages unusually high. I
find in this calendar crimes of a darker die than usual—
murder ; manslaughter, under circumstances approaching
to murder; highway robbery, with great violence, ap-
pear ; and other violent outrages against her Majesty's
subjects. To what are we to ascribe this ? Certainly not
to any want of provision for physical want ; and, there-
fore, it is confirmatory of the opinion which I believe is
very generally entertained now, that the only hope we can
entertain of improving the habits and morals of the people
is by giving the rising generation a moral and religious
education. There is a else of manslaughter against a
person of the name of Cull, which I mention for the pur-
pose of noticing, in that and several other cases, that the
depositions which have been laid before me are very un-
satisfactory. I believe a very large allowance is made for
writing the depositions, and in several instances they are
very illegible—in some, barely legible; and some of them
in a state which is by no means creditable to those em-
ployed in taking down the evidence. His lordship drew
especial notice to No. 73, a charge of violence and out-
rage committed on a young woman, and it is imputed to
some man who, I believe, was a quack doctor, and he ap-
pears to have obtained possession of her person by pre-
tending he could cure her of fits. I draw your attention to
it specially, because the details in the depositions are more
than ordinarily offensive, and it does not appear, accord-
ing to them, there is any of the resistance which is neces-
sary to constitute the crime imputed. If the party were
so ignorant as not to be at all aware of what he was about
to do, and, therefore, he got possession of her, but under
a felonious pretence, and she not at all knowing what he
was about to do, this evidence of non-resistance may be
accounted for, and it has been held by the judges that it
would still amount to a felonious outrage. If you think
she did know what he was about to Jo, however gross the
party's conduct may have been, you cannot say he com-
mitted the crime for which he is at present before you.
There is also a charge against three persons of conspiracy
to defraud the customs here; but the depositions are so
taken that I cannot read one-half of them. I mention
this publicly that notice may be taken of it, and that there
may be no further complaint. There is a charge against
Edward Lawson for a felonious outrage on a female. On
reading the depositions, and the evidence of the medical
man, it seems to me there must be some mistake about
it, and that she herself, who, no doubt, intended to be a
witness of truth, was mistaken in supposing the whole
crime was committed.