Routine 19th-century justice. The casualness of the reporting is what shocks now.
OLD BAILEY. —SATURDAY.
W. Jones was indicted for a burglary in the house of Robert Frend, and stealing therein 4 silver table spoons, 10 tea spoons, and other articles of plate, his property.
The prosecutor is a publican, in Whitechapel. Last Saturday morning he found his house broken open, and his property stolen. The shutters of the back parlour window had been broken to pieces with a very large crow bar, which was found on the premises, and the articles stolen had been taken from the bar. The prisoner had been employed by the prosecutor to paint his house, Mr. Simmons, a pawnbroker in Holborn, proved that the prison pawned the spoons with him; and a gold mourning ring belonging to the prosecutor, was found on him. Guilty — Death.
On Friday, Sarah Perry was convicted of the murder of her child. This case was most shocking, and too disgusting for its cruelty to detail at length. The prisoner was a married woman, and of the age of forty. She lived servant in a respectable family near Manchester-street. On the 25th of January she got up and went down stairs. The footman heard the cry of a child, and upon search the body of a female infant child was found under the coals. It appeared to have been suffocated by a piece of linen twisted like a rope, and thrust down its throat. There were other circumstances of barbarity, and also of appearances on the prisoner, fully confirming her guilt. In her defence, she said she had been delivered before her time, and that the child was still-born. Immediately on her conviction, she received sentence of death, to be executed to-morrow (Monday.)
The Observer, 23 February 1817
From the records, it appears that both Jones and Perry were indeed hung.1
- Jones – Class: HO 26; Piece: 23; Page: 93. Perry – Class: HO 26; Piece: 23; Page: 134. Home Office: Criminal Registers, Middlesex and Home Office: Criminal Registers, England and Wales; Records created or inherited by the Home Office, Ministry of Home Security, and related bodies, Series HO 26 and HO 27; The National Archives of the UK (TNA), Kew, Surrey, England.
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