Glasgow Courier. — 1846-06-20 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, LONDON, JUNE 16. ' SENTENUE ON THY. ISRLF.CONVRKSRD ROBBER AND MURDERER. —SINGULAR Case.—Williant Henry Norman, aged 26, described ' in the calendar as a labourer, was indicted for stealing gold and silver moneys to the value of £5O, the property of William Hoof, his monster. Mr. Clarkson appeared for the prosecution. The prisoner on being arraigned pleaded guilty, awl handed imi a pap.r to the bench, which was read by the Commoit Serjeamit to the Court. It ;an as folloes -" That your humble petitioner, in pleading goaty to time offence with whieli he stands indicted, wishes the? Court to take into consideration, that he was not aresponaible agent at the time of committing the act, and that in committing that and other crimes, he does but follow the path of destiny marked out for him. An, however, such crimes should not go ODpith ished; he begged to make three prepositions to the.beihffi: The first was, that he (the prisoner) should play the learned judge a game at billiards, a hundred up the board. 2d17, that he should play him a g.tme of draughts, best two out of three. 301 y, he should play him either at chess or cricket; that if prisoner was the whiner he was to be set free, and if on the coutrary, he was content to be hanged by the neck on the followiug morning until he was dead." Whilst this petition was being read, the prisoner kept grinning and staring about the Court in an apparently demented state. The Common Serjeant inquired of several of the officers, and also of Mr. Cope, the governor of Newgate, under whose surveillance the prisoner has been, whether there was any ground for thinking him insane? They all said decidedly not. Mr. Clarkson then went on to state to the Court the facts connected with the case, which, as they have been so fully and recently before the public, we gi%e in as brief a form as possible. The prosecutor was a builder at Kensington, and prisoner a clerk to his employ. lii the early part of the present year be was sent with the sum named in the indictment to make a payment on behalf of his master, with which he absconded. He then addressed him a letter, stating that he was an illegitimate outcast in society, &ming into a detail of robberies he had committed, and that he had taken part in several murders; and that on one oemtsion he had robbed the Custom-house in Calcutta, where he had a situation as clerk. Several of the robberies be confessed to as having been committed In England were found to be true. Some time subsequent to the robbery of Mr. Hoof, he was met in Liverpool by a gentleman who knew him in the Custom-house in Calcutta, and he gave him in custody for the robbery committed there, and he was taken before the police authorities at Liverpool, who having heard of the robbery committed on Mr. Hoof, at once sent him up to London, and the charge of robbing the Custom-house at Calcutta was abandoned, in eonsequence'of the difficulties of gaining a conviction. The Common Serjeant sentenced 11... m to 7 years' transpertion, observing that if there was any ground for supposing him insane, there would be ample time to discover it before he left Newgate; and then the seutence could be reversed.