At two o’clock on Tuesday, a jury assembled to hold an inquest on the body. The jury and coroner proceeded to the house of the Reverend Mr. Knapp, and viewed the body. The temples, eyes, and upper part of the cheek-bones were very black, and there were other external marks of violence about the ribs, breast, &c. The following evidence as to the circumstances attending the battle was then taken:—
Christopher Teasdale.—“I am a student at Eton college; I knew the deceased—he was the son of Lord Shaftesbury; and I know his antagonist Mr. Wood, the son of Colonel Wood. I saw them set-to about the hour of four o’clock on Monday afternoon. I saw repeated blows, during the fight, given to Cooper, on different parts of the head: I remember, in one period of the fight, a severe blow being given on his temple; the deceased instantly fell, and lay on the ground about half a minute. There were loud shouts from Wood’s party, in consequence of his being the best. It was a fair fight; I saw no unfair advantage taken. A young gentleman named Leith seconded the deceased; the fight lasted about an hour; the deceased’s spirits were kept up in a most extraordinary manner by Leith giving him brandy in the eleventh and subsequent rounds. I remember that before the last round, Wood said he wanted to go to his tutor, Mr. Ottery, to attend his private business (studies), and he would make it up afterwards. Mr. Leith, the second, said, that as Wood wanted to go, he would appeal to the deceased’s party, and hear what they had to say. The deceased’s party exclaimed, ‘We will have another round; we are in no hurry.’ The parties fought another round, and the deceased at the conclusion fell from a severe blow; Wood fell heavily on him. After the round, Wood said, ‘he must go, and he would make it up.’ Leith advised it to be made up on the spot, and directly the proposition was made the deceased fell back senseless. Wood walked up to the deceased and lifted his head, but I did not hear him say anything.”
Other witnesses proved that the deceased was taken home to Mr. Knapp’s, where he remained for some time under the care of his brother, and that after the lapse of some hours surgical aid was procured. It was then too late, however, and he died. On his body been opened, it was he found that he had died from the rupture of the blood-vessels on the brain.
Upon the arraignment of the defendants they pleaded Not Guilty, and the witnesses for the prosecution did not answer. Mr. Justice Gasalee having ordered their recognizances to be estreated, a verdict of Not Guilty was returned, and the defendants left the bar attended by Lord Nugent, Colonel Brown, Sir John Dashwood King, and other persons of distinction.
WILLIAM PROBERT,
EXECUTED FOR HORSE-STEALING.
THE reader will recognise in this criminal the participator with Hunt and Thurtell in the murder of Mr. Weare, and the witness who was examined on the trial of those offenders, who impeached his accomplices.
He was apprehended on the night of Friday the 18th of February, 1825, and conveyed to Bow-street office, on a charge of stealing a horse, the property of a man named Meredith, a miller, living near Ruarden in Gloucestershire. It appeared that the guilty wretch, after his discharge from Hertford jail, where he had been confined as an approver in order that his evidence might be secured at the trial of his companions in crime, wandered through the country without an object or a name, and followed by public execration. Reduced to the most abject state of misery, he at length found an asylum in the house of his aged mother at Ruarden. Meredith, the miller, was distantly related to him by marriage; and while paying him a visit, the unprincipled villain having seen and admired a mare which was in his possession, marked it for his own. Seizing a favourable opportunity, he carried the animal off with him to London, and there he disposed of her for 20l., having assumed a fictitious name. He was, however, traced by the miller, and at length on the 18th February was taken into custody.
For this offence he was put on his trial at the Old Bailey on the 7th of the following month of April, and the evidence for the prosecution, which was clear and conclusive, having been gone into, the prisoner read the following defence from a written paper:—
“My lord and gentlemen of the jury,—If I have this day pleaded not guilty to the indictment preferred against me, it is not that I wish by subtleties to evade, or screen myself from the verdict and sentence which my country may award against me, but that I may have an opportunity to say something in this court, to evince to the public, that whatever may have been the unhappy circumstances of the latter days of my life, I was not driven into my present crime from depravity of disposition, but from a species of fatal necessity, which had placed me far beyond the reach of all human assistance and charity. The appeal I now make is not with a view to lessen my past error that I unfortunately fell into, as there is a God on whom I alone rely for mercy; but I do beg of the jury to banish all former unfortunate circumstances from their minds. It cannot have escaped your notice, that immediately after and ever since my discharge from Hertford, the public animosity has been kept alive against me by the public press, which has reached every part of England. Wherever I went, even to the remotest village throughout the kingdom, I was spurned as an outcast of society; and the chief instrument which prevented my obtaining employment, or indeed effecting a reformation, was the public press, which has not slackened to follow me, and portray me to the world. As the victim of prejudice, I could scarcely move from one place to another without seeing myself noticed in the daily papers. Those of my former friends, who might otherwise have wished to continue their services towards me, shrunk back from an apprehension of public reprobation for being connected with one such as myself. Every door was shut against me, every hope of future support blasted. My country had spared my life, but individuals rendered that life of no value or utility to me. I was hunted down like a wild beast of the forest. With this desolation around me, and with these dreary prospects before me, I felt my fortitude forsaking me, and I knew not what course to pursue. Heaven and myself only know what I suffered. I was a prey to the most heart-rending care—I was a prey to a deep and intense feeling, the cause of which, I trust, it will not be necessary to refer to. I appeal to you, my lord and gentlemen, whether my situation was not most deplorable. Perhaps you will weigh in your own humane breasts the miseries which surrounded me, and what you would have done under similar circumstances. If you, gentlemen of the jury, should observe any features in my case deserving commiseration, then I trust you will express a sense of it to his lordship, and recommend me to mercy; and should you, my lord, concur in the same sentiments, then I humbly pray that your lordship will recommend me to the clemency of my gracious sovereign, as no former conviction appears on the record against me. On my way from the police-office to Newgate, my ears were stunned with the horrid yells of the populace, and my life threatened. Indeed, my lord and gentlemen of the jury, since the calamitous event that took place at Hertford, I have been a lost man, and at times on the eve of self-destruction. But the Almighty God has sustained me under my heaviest afflictions, and should his wisdom direct that my life is to be spared, the remainder of my days will be spent in atonement for past errors that I have fallen into. I hope I have not intruded too long upon your lordship’s time. I felt it my duty to state to your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury, how miserable my life has been and the severe trials I have undergone since my discharge from Hertford: and likewise my innocent wife has suffered all privations, without comfort and without a friend to assist her, and even on the point of starvation, she having lately been brought to bed with an increase to the family, and no one to assist her in that trying moment or to render her any way comfortable; but, on the contrary, nothing but distress and trouble, and even at the present time destitute of friends and home. Such, gentlemen of the jury, has been and is now, the situation of my wife. Indeed, my lord and gentlemen of the jury, I have endeavoured to leave the country, and several times offered to work my passage over. But all my endeavours to accomplish my wishes have been unsuccessful. For the indulgence you have this day shown to me, by attending to the address I have now made, I feel greatly obliged; therefore, I cannot help reminding you, my lord and gentlemen of the jury, of the happiness I once possessed, and was ever ready to alleviate the distresses of my fellow-creatures, and to contribute to the support of charitable institutions. I hope I am more the object of commiseration than that of severe censure. I am aware, my lord and gentlemen of the jury, the whole country is against me; but that, I trust, will not bias your minds; as a trial by jurymen of my country does credit to the wise laws of the realm, and does not less reflect the same sensible feelings on my own mind. I therefore trust, if there should be any marks favourable in my case, you will give me the benefit.”