At these Assizes also was tried Anderton v. Gibbs and Ferney, the latter being executors of Mr. John Moor, a manufacturer of Dudley, and whose daughter Mrs. Anderton claimed to be. The question was one of legitimacy, Mr. Moor’s wife having left him and formed a criminal intimacy with a Mr. Corfield at the time of Mrs. Anderton’s birth. The jury found a verdict for plaintiff, and property, to the amount of £6,000, thus passed into Mr. Anderton’s possession.
1835—At Warwick Lent Assizes was tried Davies v. Badger, an action brought by a journeyman whitesmith of Dudley, against Mr. Badger a magistrate of Dudley, for striking him with a stick at the Dudley booth, at the previous East Worcester election. Mr. Balguy, K.C., was for plaintiff, and Mr. Sergeant Goulburn for defendant. It was of course made a political affair, and excited great interest. Mr. Badger, through his counsel and his witnesses, denied ever striking the man at all. The jury returned a verdict for plaintiff: damages £30, costs 40s.
1835—At the Midsummer Assizes was tried Parker and Son v. Robinson, M.P., a case which excited much attention at the time, and was particularly interesting to those of the legal profession who looked to reap rich harvests at elections. The plaintiffs sued Mr. Robinson for assistance said to have been given him in the way of canvass, &c., at the election of 1832, when the sitting members were threatened with an opposition by the Hon. Mr. Dundas. Mr. Robinson had paid £75, and paid £13 into court, but the amount of the bill was £186. Mr. Robinson pleaded that he had not given authority for such expenses to be incurred by plaintiffs, who, at this election, were only subsidiary agents, Mr. Cameron being his chief attorney. Various solicitors were examined pro and con to show that the charges were reasonable or otherwise; and the Jury, eventually, returned a verdict for plaintiffs, damages £38; thus Mr. Robinson paid £126 instead of £186. Mr. Sergeant Ludlow was for plaintiffs, and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P., for defendant; and both made amusing speeches about the affair.
1836—At the Lent Assizes, before Mr. Justice Williams, was tried Badger v. Cooke, an action brought by Mr. Badger, the Dudley magistrate, against Mr. Samuel Cooke, the celebrated Radical mercer, for a libel. After Mr. Badger had been found guilty of the assault on Davis at the Stourbridge election, Cooke issued a placard triumphing in the result of that trial, and saying that “every honest man must ever afterwards look with most indignant contempt on his (Mr. Badger’s) actions, since he had already disgraced the dignified functions of his station,” &c. &c. The defendant addressed the jury in his own defence, quoting papers to show that Mr. Badger often made use of as strong expressions towards his political opponents, and declaring that it was nothing more than a question of Tory and Radical. He was found guilty, Mr. Justice Williams declaring that the paper had a palpable tendency to defame and degrade Mr. Badger in his character as a magistrate. He was only required to enter into a recognizance of £50 to appear when called upon.
1838—At the Summer Assizes this year a very painful and remarkable case of circumstantial evidence took place, being no other than the trial of a wife and daughter for the murder of one who had stood to them in the relation of husband and father. On the evening of the 3rd of August, 1837, Mr. John Orchard, the landlord of the Woolstaplers’ Arms Inn, in Stourbridge, a man in the prime of life and in good health, was seen to go up the yard attached to his house, and his wife and eldest daughter, with a man named Smith, were seen to follow him. He never returned alive. Smith came down the yard again shortly, but the wife and daughter remained there some time. Two or three hours afterwards the daughter told some of the people in the house that her father was very ill, and she was afraid he would die; but no one saw him until he was actually dead. When a surgeon arrived the body was on a chair in the kitchen, and Mrs. Orchard was supporting the head in her hands. She pointed the surgeon’s attention to a small hole between the third and fourth ribs, immediately over the heart, and said she supposed it was done by a nail in tumbling over some tubs in the yard. He had a shirt on, but there was no hole in that. The brewhouse, tubs, and yard appeared to have been just washed, and the opinion of the medical man was, that Orchard must have been dead an hour at least when he saw him. On a post mortem examination, the wound in question was found to be four inches and a half deep, and went right through the pericardium and right ventricle, so that it must have caused almost instant death. Of course grave suspicion under these circumstances could not but attach to the mother and daughter, especially as there had been repeated quarrels between them and the deceased, and the wife was also suspected to have been improperly familiar with the man Smith. The coroner’s jury, however, returned a verdict of “wilful murder against some parties unknown,” and months passed without any further discovery. At last a woman, who had assisted in laying out the corpse, told some party that the man was murdered with a skewer, which was afterwards thrown into the Stour. The woman, when interrogated by the police, denied having said anything of the sort; but a skewer—just such an instrument as would have produced the wound—was found in the Stour, nevertheless. The wife and daughter were then apprehended and put on their trial. Mr. Whateley conducted the prosecution, and Mr. Godson the defence. The judge, Lord Abinger, told the jury that they must not convict the prisoners on suspicion, and they were both acquitted.
1838—At the County Epiphany Sessions, William Baylis, the crier of Evesham, appealed against the commitment of three justices, who had ordered him to be sent to prison, under the 60th and 65th sections of the Municipal Act, for refusing to deliver up the bell. It was denied that the court had a right to entertain the appeal, but the court chose to do so, and quashed the conviction, subject to a case to the Queen’s Bench on the points argued. A similar appeal was heard from Robert Knight, one of the sergeants-at-mace under the old corporation, who refused to deliver up his mantle. The magistrates were—Mr. Strickland, Mr. Cheek, and Mr. Ashwin.
1839—At the Midsummer Assizes the Rev. T. B. G. Moore, curate of Bromsgrove, prosecuted Mr. J. B. Crane, carrier, Mr. Nicholas Hill, publican, Mr. W. Whitehouse, farmer, Samuel Taylor, John Pinfield, jun., William Sansome, George Wakeman, labourers, and Henry Hill, baker, for a riot alleged to have taken place at a church rate meeting at Bromsgrove; and Nicholas Hill and Taylor were also charged with an assault on the Rev. prosecutor. The meeting in question was held on the 14th of the previous February, and the parties who had got first to the vestry had voted Mr. Greening to the chair and then declared the meeting adjourned to the Town Hall; Mr. Moore, the curate, however, declared that he was the only lawful chairman and adjourned the meeting to the school-room. Here there was a scene of great excitement, and after the meeting had decided by a very large majority that there should be no rate, a poll was demanded by the pro-rate party. Immediately upon this there was a general rush to the platform—a violent struggle for the vestry book—and all sorts of people—Mr. Moore amongst the number—were tumbled about, struck, and ill-treated. It was said that the riot had been instigated by Mr. Nicholas Hill and Mr. Crane, and that Mr. Hill, in getting the book out of the curate’s possession, had forced his head against the desk so as to cause great pain. Mr. Sergeant Ludlow, in his speech for the defence, made much of this being a case got up by subscription—to crush the Bromsgrove opponents of church rates, and to put money into the purse of Mr. Annesley, an attorney, living twenty-five miles away from Bromsgrove. Whitehouse and Sansome were acquitted; Mr. Nicholas Hill found guilty of assault and riot, and the rest of the defendants of a riot only. Counsel for plaintiff, Mr. Sergeant Talfourd and Mr. Lea; attorney, Mr. Annesley of Pershore; for defendants, Mr. Sergeant Ludlow and Mr. Godson; attorney, Mr. F. T. Elgie, Worcester. In the following November defendants were called up for judgment (after an unsuccessful effort to get a new trial), when Nicholas Hill was sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment, and the other three to four weeks’ imprisonment each.
At the same Assizes, Mr. Meredith, woolstapler, of Pershore, was convicted of striking Lieutenant Amherst three times, one day in the open street. There had been considerable excitement in the town about the election of Guardians of the Poor for the parish of St. Andrew, in the preceding March, and the plaintiff and defendant were active men on opposite sides. The first time they met in the street, Meredith put a paper into plaintiff’s face, saying, “Look at that;” and when he put up his clenched fist to defend himself, Meredith knocked his hat on one side. The second time Lieutenant Amherst admitted that he had called Meredith a d— blackguard, before any blow was struck, but Meredith afterwards hit him several times. Meredith, having been found guilty, was fined £20, and bound over himself in £300, and two sureties of £100 each, to keep the peace for three years.
1839—At the Michaelmas Sessions Samuel Cooke, the celebrated Chartist draper at Dudley, was prosecuted for attending and assisting at a riotous and illegal meeting at Dudley, on the 16th of July. It was proved that a placard, calling the meeting, had been seen in Cooke’s window, and that he himself addressed the assembly; but it did not appear that he had said anything very outrageous. The meeting was tumultuous, but no actual mischief had been done. Cooke defended himself with a good deal of shrewdness, and complained that he was a persecuted man. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, which was generally considered to be a very sharp political visitation of his offence. William Smith Lindon and James Hollis, for using seditious language at the same meeting, were sentenced, the first to three months’, and the second to six weeks’ imprisonment.
1841—In November this year, in the Queen’s Bench, a rule nisi for a criminal information, was granted against the Worcestershire Chronicle, on the application of W. H. Ricketts, Esq., for a libel in that paper imputing to him jobbing and interested motives in disposing of the public money to be laid out in building the Droitwich Police Station. Upon the proprietors of the Chronicle admitting that they had been misled and offering an apology, Mr. Ricketts consented to the discharge of the rule. The information on which the article complained of by Mr. Ricketts was written, was supplied by Mr. George Ellins, a brother magistrate; and as he refused to pay any of the costs which the proprietors of the Chronicle had incurred, they inserted another article, charging Mr. Ellins with having misled them in the matter. This brought another rule nisi upon them from Mr. Ellins, who affirmed that he did not volunteer the statement to Mr. Arrowsmith, and had especially told him that what he did say was not for publication. The argument against the rule did not come on till November, when Mr. Sergeant Talfourd showed cause for the Chronicle, and the Solicitor General supported the rule on behalf of Mr. Ellins. Lord Denman said it was absurd to suppose that Mr. Ellins gave the information to Mr. Arrowsmith for any other purpose than that of publication; and the rule was discharged with costs.