The Sun. — 1846-01-06 (London, England)

CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT OLD COURT.  The RECORDER entered the Court at ten o'clock, and the grand jury having been summoned, and having appeared, he said that it would not be necessary for him to occupy their attention for any length of time. The only cases desiring any particular notice were those of a murder that had been committed on the high seas, and a robbery that had been attended with circumstances of great aggravation. The Learned Recorder then went in extenso into the case of Johnstone, the facts of which have already appeared fully in this journal, and suid that unier all the circumstances he must recommend them to find the bills. The other case to which he alluded to was one of a robbery of a 10/. note (the robbery iu Regent's-park), in which the prisoner had used, the most violent means, and he would request them to give this case the most serious considPration. There was nothing else of a character that required him to detain them longer. The swearing in of the petit jury was then proceeded with, which occupied the greater portion of the day.  Joseph Heaviside surrendered to answer an indictment charging him with the offence of misdemeanour. Mr. Payne conducted the prosecution ; Mr. Clarkson, with Mr. Baldwin, appeared fur the defendant. From the statement of the Learned Counsel for the proseculion, and the evidence that was adduced, it appeared that the defendant was the mate of a vessel called the Nunez, and the offence with which he was charged was having committed a series of assaults upon a led named John Huggard, who was an apprentice on board the vessel. According to the statement of the prosecutor, a rather weakly but intelligent boy, he sailed from Shields on a voyage to Alexandria with coals, and when they sere near Gibraltar the defendant beat him severely with a rope's-end, and when they were in the harbour of Alexandria, and the coals were being discharged, he was set to " trim" the lighter, that k shovel the coals level as they were discharged from the vessel, and because he was not strong enough to do it, he said the mate pelted him with large pieces of coal, which made wounds on both his legs, and that the captain put bluestone into the wounds, and he also said that after this, and while his legs ware very bad, the mate used to jeer him, and tell him to go aft and " get his bluestune." He likewise said, that because he could not learn the compass the defendant used sometimes to give him a couple of dozen blows on his hand with a shoo, which made his hands very sore, and caused lumps to come upon his wrists. In cross-examination. the boy admitted that he might have d—d the black cook, and that he had said he should like to leave the ship. He likewise said, that on the occasion when he was struck with the rope, he had been ordered to see that the cook did not waste the water when he served it out, and that he neglected to do so, and told the mate that he had " turned in" instead. Mr. Brown, the medical superintendent at Stangate Creek, proved that on the arrival of the vessel in England he examined the person of the witness, and found sonic sores about his ankles, but in answer to a question from the Court, he said lie did not think they could have been occa,ioned in the way stated by the boy, but they seemed to him more like the injury that would be occasioned by the ;friction of a shoe upon a tender skin irritated by salt water. Mr. CLARKSON, in addressing the jury for the defendant, argued that it was a most trumpery charge ; that with regard to the story about throwing the coals it had been negatived by the evidence of the surgeon, and as to beating with the rope, the defendant was perfectly justified in inflicting it, by reason of the complainant's neglect of his duty in not reporting to him, upon so important a subject to a ship at sea, as the waste of the water that was on board. The RECORDER having summed up, the jury, after deliberating a short time, returned a verdict of Not Guilty. Mr. PAYNE applied to have the defendant held to bail, to answer any indictment that might be P referrei against him. He had committed a great many other assaults upon the boy besides those which formed the subject of the present indictment. Mr. CLARKSON objected to this, as the vessel was about to sail. He said the captain of the Nunez was ready to