Mr. Scarlett addressed the court in mitigation. The punishment, he said, that the court would feel it due to justice to inflict would be of little additional consequence to the defendant as his ruin was already consummated; but he had a wife and six children who had been virtuously bred and educated, and it was on their account he implored the court not to inflict a punishment on the defendant which would render him infamous.
Serjeant Cockell said it was not his wish to bruise the bended reed, yet it was necessary that an example should be made of the defendant. He was a clergyman and a teacher of youth; and the prosecutors, who had acted from the most laudable motives, had abundant reasons for what they had done. They felt themselves irresistibly called upon to check the practices imputed to the defendant, and which there was too much reason for believing he had indulged in for a considerable time past.
Mr. Justice Grose, in passing sentence, addressed the defendant to the following effect: ‘You have been convicted of an assault on a child of very tender years; the narrative of your conduct is horrible to hear, and horrible to reflect upon—the aggravations of your offence, I am sorry to say, are multifarious—the object of your brutality was a child committed to your care, and you are a teacher, a man grey in years and possessing a large family. In looking to the class of misdemeanours, I know of none so horrible as the one of which you have been convicted. Of your guilt it is impossible to doubt, and I am shocked to see a clergyman standing to receive sentence for such an offence.’ The accused was sentenced to three years imprisonment.
Flogging with a Frying-pan.
At the Woolwich Police court, Dec. 29th 1882, an elderly man named James Bone was charged on a summons before Mr. Mersham with assaulting Margaret Chapman.
The complainant, a widow, said that the defendant engaged her to go to his house in Nun St., Woolwich, and do a day’s washing. There was no other person in the house, and the defendant told her he had turned his wife out of doors. About midday he gave her a glass of spirits which took such effect that she did not remember whether she had any more or not. She remembered no more until the evening, when she found herself lying undressed upon the floor, and the defendant pouring water over her from a pail. He had stripped her of everything and beaten her with some weapon about the body until she was covered with bruises from head to foot. As soon as she recovered sufficiently she ran out of the house to escape from his violence, and some women got clothing for her.
Defendant said he gave the woman a glass of stout with her lunch, and afterwards a glass of brandy. He went out in the afternoon, and when he returned, he found that she had drunk a pint of rum and was in a shocking state of intoxication. She stripped herself and tried to go to bed, but fell helpless on the floor, and he then bathed her with cold water, spoiling his new carpet, and also tried to bring her to her senses by flogging her with the hot frying-pan. He did not deny causing her bruises, for he hit her perhaps a hundred times, and if she had not been so heavy he would have thrown her out of the window. He tied a rope round her feet, but could not drag her out of the room and, after giving her some more water, she got up and walked into the street just as she was. He was so disgusted that if he could have got a gun he would have shot her. All that he could do was to send for a cab and get her away.
Mrs. C. Limey said that she had occasion to go to the house on business, and the defendant showed her the complainant lying stripped upon the carpet. She got up on hearing a woman’s voice and ran into the street. There were several weals upon her body, and her clothes had evidently been torn from her with violence.
The prisoner was remanded in custody for a week.