29.—At the Norwich Assizes, before Mr. Justice Erle, John Whitley Cooper and Edmund Slingsby Drury Long, solicitors, and Frederick Goose, dealer, were indicted for unlawfully conspiring to obtain, by false pretences, from Sarah Roberts Tooke, widow, divers goods, furniture, and effects, with intent to defraud. Cooper was at the time undergoing sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment, passed upon him at Norwich Quarter Sessions on December 31st, 1850, for fraud. He was now sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in the Common Gaol; Long was acquitted, and Goose, who had absconded, forfeited his recognisances. The victim of this conspiracy, said the Judge, had been reduced from a position of respectability to one of absolute ruin.
APRIL.
12.—Mr. Fred Phillips, while performing the part of Rob Roy at Norwich Theatre, fell from a “fictitious precipice” and sustained a compound fracture of the bones of the leg “implicating the ankle joint.” He was removed to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, and “upon a consultation among the surgeons it was deemed necessary to amputate the lower extremity of the bone, an operation which was borne with heroic fortitude by the poor sufferer.” A performance was given at the Theatre on May 6th for the benefit of Mr. Phillips, when Mr. George Bennett made his last appearance on the stage, in the part of Farmer Ashfield, and Mrs. Phillips sustained the character of Miss Blandford in “The Ladies’ Club.” Mr. Phillips received a second benefit on April 20th, 1852, and on July 9th, 1853, announced that he had taken the Boar’s Head Inn, Surrey Street.
23.—The headquarters of the 11th Hussars, commanded by the Earl of Cardigan, marched from Norwich Barracks for Nottingham, and were succeeded on the 25th by the 2nd Dragoon Guard’s (Queen’s Bays).
—Samuel Woodhouse, of Plumstead, and William Pyle, of Holt, were buried alive in a well 115 feet deep, at Docking, by the falling in of 36 feet of soil. “Some of the inhabitants proposed to fill up the well and let them remain in it, stating that the same thing had been done at Tittleshall, where an inquest was held at the mouth of the well and the body or bodies remain there to this day.” Efforts were made, however, to recover the bodies. That of Pyle was found on May 14th, and of Woodhouse on the 15th. “Though the bodies had been buried exactly three weeks, on their being brought to the surface and moved about blood flowed freely from both of them.”
30.—Died, aged 78, Mr. Richard Slann, of Southtown, Great Yarmouth, historical engraver to her Majesty the Queen.
MAY.
3.—The Census returns for the city of Norwich were published. The number of inhabited houses was 14,990, of uninhabited 339, and in course of building 101. The population was 68,706, of whom 31,213 were males, and 37,493 females.
4.—A pauper named John Rowland, who had had a remarkable career, died at Lynn Workhouse. He was educated at Eton, and was afterwards a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Ordained deacon and priest by Bishop Horsley, he officiated at St. James’s, Westminster, and went out to St. Petersburg as chaplain to the Embassy. Subsequently he either threw off his gown or had it taken from him, and became a blacksmith and coach-spring maker in Norfolk Street, Lynn. He was apprehended, tried, and transported for stealing iron, the property of Mr. Bottomley, of South Gates, in that town. At the expiration of his term of transportation he returned to Lynn, made a settlement in the town, and was for several years an inmate of the Workhouse. He died at the advanced age of 78 years.
12.—Died, at the age of 63, at his residence, the Close, Norwich, Mr. William Ollett, “who obtained justly-deserved eminence as a carver of wood for ecclesiastical purposes, and whose skill was called into requisition in most of the cathedrals of this kingdom.”