The Barrow Herald and Furness Advertiser. — 1871-08-12 (Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England)

CROWN COURT. BEFORE MR. BARON BARTIN.  The calendar contains the names of 53 prisoners, of whom 13 can neither read nor write, 8 can read only, 16 can read and write imperfectly, and 6 can read and write well. Mr. Baron hisaris, in charging the grand jury, said the number of prisoners to he tried and the offences with which they were charged were nearly about the average. He did not know that they fell much short of or much exceeded what was common in this county, or, he might say, in this hundred. There were about 50 prisoners, but he was sorry to say that twelve of them were in custody for homicide. In the ca.:ender a very considerable number of them were charged with murder, but it might be that the grand jury would be of opinion that the offences did not come up to that crime, and there were several of them in which the circumstances certainly reduced the crime to manslaughter. With regard to these the grand jury would exercise their own judgment, but if they were in any difficulty respecting them he would aid them as far as he could, as it was very desirable that people should be put on their trial for the offences which they really appeared to have committed, and not be put on their trial for murder and acquitted, when manslaughter had been really committed. There was one case which was clearly not murder. A woman named Elizabeth Gray was committed for the murder of her infant child. As it seemed to him she had been confined of a child which she alleged to have been born dead. The medical man, however, took it upon himself to say that it was born alive, and the consequence was that the young woman had been committed for murder. The case, I however, looked very much like one of concealment I of birth. The others were ordinary Liverpool cases—people getting chunk and angry with each other, and flying to the knife or poker, or anything which they could find, and using it, without perhaps an intention to do any serious injury. There was a very bad case of an offence against a woman —one of the worst he had ever heard of. There were also two cases of offences alleged to have been committed on board ships which sailed out of Liverpool, and he feared that in one of these cases the fact of there being a very short-handed crew and of a great deal of work having been imposed upon them had probably led to the offence. However, violence had been committed, which was not justifiable in law. In another case, a mate who ! had been tyrannical to the seamen had been very I badly beaten. The only other to which he need call attention was one of alleged conspiracy to defraud. A conspiracy was an agreement between two or more persons to commit an offence punishable by law. In this case it seemed to him that if the evidence was the same as that which appeared on the depositions, the grand jury would find that there was no conspiracy at all. A ship sailed from Liverpool for a port in Africa, and, having sustained some damage going down the channel, put into a Welsh port. Her anchor and cable were carried away, but were afterwards recovered. Communication was made to a man named Smith, who was part owner of the ship, and who then lived in Liverpool, but had since died, and he went over to Wales. He subsequently made out an account for an average loss of the ship, and among other things charged in the account the cable and anchor. As far as he (the learned judge) could see, this claim was a concoction of Smith himself. All Whitehead, the prisoner, did, was to make out the account under his own billhead. He had nothing to do with the claim on the underwriters, and, this being so, was not guilty of conspiracy.—His Lordship then dismissed the grand jury to their duties.