Thomas Fenner confirmed the last witness. He stated that both the prisoners were flogging their horses at a most furious rate down the hill, and he was convinced that the accident might have been avoided with common care, notwithstanding the velocity with which the horses were driven, as there was quite room enough for the Chester Mail to have passed the Holyhead.
Mr. Baron Gurney summed up the case for the jury in an eloquent and impressive manner. The jury found the prisoners "Guilty."
The learned Judge, in passing sentence, commented on the conduct of the prisoners in terms of strong animadversion. His Lordship laid it down distinctly, as a proposition not to be disputed, that it was unlawful for the driver to put his horses into a gallop, and that he was answerable for all the consequences of an infringement of this law. The driver of a stage-coach was bound to protect even the intoxicated, the blind, the aged, and the helpless against their own want of caution or imprudence. The case now before the Court presented circumstances of gross aggravation, and his Lordship felt it his duty to pronounce the severest judgment that the law would allow, which was that the prisoners should be severally confined in the common gaol of this county for the term of one year.
At the Wiltshire Assizes in 1813, an action was brought by a Mr. Gooden against the proprietors of a mail coach, to recover damages for a serious injury sustained by the plaintiff, from its being overturned. It appeared in evidence that the plaintiff was an outside passenger, that the coach was overturned immediately on quitting the yard of the "Red Lion Inn," Salisbury, and that a compound fracture of the plaintiff's leg was the consequence of the accident. It seemed established that there was no gross misconduct on the part of the coachman to call for vindictive damages. Mr. Justice Gibbs left it to the jury to determine whether the defendants were liable on account of the apparent heedlessness of the coachman in not leading the horses out of the yard, and it was agreed that if the jury found the defendants liable, the verdict should pass for all such expenses as the plaintiff had reasonably incurred, which were to be ascertained by a reference. The jury found a verdict for the plaintiff, and the referee assessed the damages at six hundred pounds.
In the same year there was an inquest held upon a woman who was run over by a Manchester coach, and the verdict was "Accidental death," with a deodand of four pounds on the fore horse.
On the night of November the 23rd, 1696, six highwaymen attacked the Ware coach on Stamford Hill, and after the customary amount of imprecations, led the horses, vehicle, and passengers under a gibbet; they then proceeded to rifle each individual, and tore out the breeches-pockets, and the skirts from the waistcoats of the gentlemen, to be certain of their contents, which amounted to above a hundred pounds.
At the moment the thieves had completed their intentions, a gentleman's servant passed with a cart; the man was immediately summoned to surrender, which he did without resistance; part of the lading of this prize proved to be several hampers of wine.
Elated by the success of the evening, the highwaymen opened the hampers, seized the bottles, and emptied many in repeated healths to the owner of the liquid, which expanding the generous nature of the six, they insisted upon the stage coachman and his passengers solacing themselves for their misfortunes by repeated applications to the favourite beverage of the "Rosy God;" then presenting each with two bottles, they were dismissed on their journey in a state nearly approaching intoxication.
A horseman coming by, they robbed him of his palfrey, but plied him so hotly with their liquor that he seemed very little sensible of his loss; so that stumbling to his inn in his boots, with a bottle in each hand, he made all that he found in the kitchen drink of his wine, and gave them no small diversion by acting the story and knocking down several of the company, as the thieves did him.
The person who afforded this diversion to his auditor and spectators on the memorable night of the robbery, appears to have retained much of the good-humour produced by the plundered wine when he wrote and sent the following advertisement to the editor of the "Flying Post:"—