1824—At the Midsummer Assizes, before Mr. Justice Littledale, was tried the cause of Pierpoint v. Shapland, in which Matthew Pierpoint, Esq., of Worcester, surgeon (and as it proved upon the trial, physician also), brought an action for slander against Miss Susanna Shapland, a lady then residing in College Green. The damages were laid at £5,000. Mr. Pierpoint had been called in to attend Mrs. Isaacs, Miss Shapland’s sister, shortly before her death, and administered an emetic: after that he ceased to attend her, and Miss Shapland afterwards told Mrs. Henry Clifton that Mr. P. had treated her sister improperly. Mr. Jervis was counsel for plaintiff, and Mr. Russell for defendant. A verdict was returned for plaintiff, with 39s. damages. This trial excited extraordinary interest—ladies, to make sure of places, going to the courts at five o’clock in the morning.
1825—At the Lent Assizes an action for libel, against Chalk and Holl, was tried before Mr. Justice Littledale. It was brought by a painter named Davis, who had, by mistake, been described in a paragraph in the Worcester Herald as concerned in a street row and an assault upon a watchman. The party’s name was Davis, but not the one pointed at in the paragraph, and defendants, finding their error, corrected it in the next paper and apologised; nevertheless Davis persisted in the action, urged thereto, as it came out in the trial, by his attorney, who had undertaken that it should cost him nothing. The counsel engaged were—for the plaintiff, Mr. Campbell (now Lord Chief Justice Campbell); and for defendant, Mr. Russell. The jury returned a verdict for plaintiff, as the judge told them they must to do so, with damages one farthing.
1827—Summer Assizes, before Mr. Justice Littledale. The King v. Cooke was an action against a draper, at Dudley, of the most Radical cast, for publishing libels on His Majesty’s Government. The libels were placards exhibited in the defendant’s window during a time of great disturbance amongst the colliers, in May, 1826. The case had been entered for trial at previous assizes, but put off from time to time. The alleged libel in the placards was the assertion that ministers were bringing starvation upon the people by their measures. Mr. Whateley was for the prosecution, and Mr. Campbell for the defence. The appearance of the placards in the defendant’s window having been proved, Mr. Andrew Gracewood, doorkeeper at the Foreign Office, was put in the box to prove that Earl Liverpool and others mentioned in the handbills were at the time of their publication ministers of state. Mr. Campbell, of course, ridiculed the whole prosecution, and said Cooke was being made the victim of private malice. The judge told the jury the handbills were libellous, so they returned a verdict of guilty. Cooke was only required to enter into sureties to appear when called up.
1827—At the Lent Assizes this year there were nearly a hundred prisoners for trial, and against twenty-four of them sentence of death was recorded.
At these assizes was tried Agg v. Timbrell, in which the plaintiff recovered £7 damages for the injury done to his gig by the negligent driving of the defendant’s coachman. Mr. Charles Phillips was counsel for plaintiff, and Mr. Taunton for defendant. The affair was chiefly curious from the remark of defendant, who, when the accident happened and Agg complained, said, “Do you know who I am? I’m Doctor Timbrell, Doctor of Divinity, Archdeacon, and magistrate in two counties. Don’t talk to me, or I’ll commit you!”
1828—In November, this year, in the King’s Bench, a rule for a criminal information against the Rev. Humphry Price, for issuing inflammatory handbills at the time of the late strike between the Kidderminster weavers and their masters, was made absolute. The Rev. gentleman appeared in court himself, and avowed himself to be the author of the placards charged against him. The cause against him was tried at the next Hereford Lent Assizes. A number of verses, entitled “The Complaint of a Kidderminster Weaver’s Wife to her Infant,” appeared to be most complained of; they ended thus:
“O cruel, cruel, cruel masters,
Dare ye thus mock at our disasters?
See parent, child, to phrenzy given,
And dream yourselves of reaching heaven?Rouse from your slumbers! count the price
Of your own cursed avarice;
And count it well, ere taught too late
To dread than ours a far worse fate.”
Mr. Campbell defended the Rev. gentleman, but he was found guilty, and being brought up for judgment next term, was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment, and adjudged to pay the costs.
1829—At the Midsummer Assizes, before Mr. Baron Vaughan, John Hunter, Esq., of Pershore, was tried for feloniously altering a deed. A true bill had been returned against Mr. Hunter at the Lent Assizes, but he was enlarged till the Midsummer Assizes on very heavy bail. The respectability of Mr. Hunter, who but for this charge would this very year have been High Sheriff of the County, caused the intensest interest to be felt in the trial, and the courts were thronged to suffocation. Mr. Campbell, K.C., Mr. Sergeant Ludlow, Mr. Carwood, and Mr. Godson, were the counsel for the prosecution; and Mr. Taunton, Mr. Sergeant Russell, and Mr. C. Phillips, assisted the defendant, who, as the law then stood, was obliged to address the jury himself, and could only avail himself of counsel in cross-examination, this being a misdemeanour. The charge against Mr. Hunter was that he had erased the words “part of” from a deed which he held, and the effect of the erasure would be to put him in possession of the whole of the premises to which it referred. In fact, in 1825 he brought an action on the strength of this deed to recover the whole of the premises, but permitted himself to be non-suited. Mr. Hunter, in the written defence he handed in to be read to the jury, contented himself with denying any knowledge of how the erasure came about, and that it existed in the deed when it first came into his possession, he having bought the property as an entire property. The evidence given, and some of the witnesses adduced by the prosecution, were of a very doubtful character; and after the long array of witnesses which Mr. Hunter called to speak to a long life of unblemished uprightness, the jury said they would not trouble his lordship to sum up, and Mr. Hunter must be honourably acquitted.
1830—At the Summer Assizes, before Mr. Sergeant Bosanquet, came on the case of Chalk and Holl v. Robinson, M.P., being an action to recover £13. 8s. 6d. for printing electioneering squibs on Mr. Robinson’s behalf, at the election of 1826. They were written and ordered by some of Mr. Robinson’s agents and solicitors, and his object in resisting the claim was to disown any personal connection with them. The matter was referred, at the judge’s request, to Mr. Holroyd; and he awarded the sum claimed to the plaintiffs, holding Mr. Robinson liable; Mr. Brampton proving that the orders came from his committee room.