Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
27 January 1834
CATHARINE HASTINGS, residing in King Street, was put to the bar, charged with threatening to break the head of a neighbour named CATHERINE DAVIS residing in the same street. On Friday evening last, the parties had some words together, and the prisoner arming herself with a large piece of wood, went out and struck the complainant several times with it, at the same time alleging that the cause of it, was in consequence of DAVIS having appeared as a witness against a party at the Police Office, who was committed to take his trial for a robbery, and using threatening language to her, if she gave evidence against him at the Supreme Court. The Bench considering the circumstance of this threatening a witness, who was about to give evidence on a charge of felony to be of a very aggravated nature, although, at the same time, they were quite sure that the description of the house the complainant lived in, and the character of the inmates were none of the best, yet they felt compelled to visit the offence with the severest penalty the law enabled them to inflict, and sent the prisoner six months to the third class in Mrs. GORDON’S Seminary, and to be returned to Government. Mrs. HASTINGS here pleaded that she was assigned to her husband. Colonel WILSON informed her the Bench were quite aware of that circumstance, but they considered the nature of her offence to be one of so gross a character, and of a description which they were so frequently called to adjudicate upon, that they were compelled to resort to the utmost rigour of the law, and Mrs. HASTINGS was accordingly led from the bar, a bill of lading being made out consigning her to the care of the Matron for malcontents at Parramatta.
CITATION
Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of CATHARINE HASTINGS,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18340127/, accessed [insert current date].
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