Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
DATE: 13 July 1844
POLICE.
SATURDAY.
A RESPECTABLE POLICEMAN.—BRIDGET MURPHY was both charged with theft and highly disorderly conduct. If INSPECTOR FOX, as many persons in this town aver, makes many victims, he is, in the due course of natural justice, in turn “victimised.” A week or two since one interesting female [SUSAN HAMMOND] bolted from his establishment, taking with her Mrs. F’s Sunday parasol, and here we have another instance of how the Terror of the ill-doers has been again exposed to the influence of misplaced attachment developed in MURPHY’s abstraction of a pencil case and watch guard, both silver, for HENRY FOX is no common man. On Friday evening FOX observing the prisoner and a man named SMITH, whose services, from his extreme good character, have been successively dispensed with by the Sydney and Windsor Police, on terms that a single female and a married man as SMITH was, ought not to be, he resolved to watch their proceedings, and having run them down to a domicile in one of the suburban rookeries, he went thither at something after the peaceful midnight hour. His rap without produced confusion with the rap within. He heard a shifting of beds and pillows—but once admitted, FOX was not a man to be bolstered. He found MURPHY and two other ladies sleeping together in one room, and SMITH alone in bed in another apartment, but on turning down the clothes, MURPHY’s petticoat met his searching gaze; and as petticoats are not gifted with the powers of independent locomotion, it was feasible to suppose it had been left there by its fair owner. In searching MURPHY the Inspector found a guard-chain and pencil case, which had unaccountably disappeared some time since from his possession. The Court being of opinion that it was not safe that females possessing seductive qualities like MURPHY should be allowed to be abroad to the injury of married peoples’ rights and privileges recommended the cancellation of her ticket, and ordered her return to the Factory.
CITATION
Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of BRIDGET MURPHY,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18440713-3/, accessed [insert current date].
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