Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
DATE: 28 September 1844
POLICE.
SATURDAY.
JANE WILSON, (ticket-of-leave) was brought up on a charge of stabbing with intent to do grievous bodily harm. WILLIAM SMITH (ticket-of-leave) deposed that, on the previous day, he had gone into prisoner’s house, he knew her because she washed for him, but he was very drunk, and did not know what he went in for. She ordered him out of the house, but he refused to go, some words then ensued between them, and when he seated himself in a chair he felt his arm and hand wet, and found them saturated with blood. The prisoner pulled off his jacket for him, and found his arm cut. He was very drunk, and could not say whether the prisoner had done it, or whether he had fallen down and cut himself; neither could he remember what he told the Chief Constable. DR. HUNT, of George-street, dressed the wound, and found a clean cut about two inches in length and three quarters of an inch deep. The edges of the cut were clean, and must have been done with a knife or some sharp instrument, and not have been inflicted with glass. MR. RYAN, Chief Constable, saw the first witness coming up the street with his arm bleeding, and asked him how he had done it, when he replied that, JANE (the prisoner) had stabbed him. The man was not particularly drunk at the time. He then went to prisoner’s, and asked her about it. The case was remanded to Monday.
…
MONDAY
JANE WILSON, for stabbing, was again put to the bar. THOMAS GOOT, coachmaker, deposed, he was working at MR. CARRINGTON’s, when a man came to him, and told him that there was a man in prisoner’s house beating his (witness’) wife: he went there and found his wife lying on the floor, bleeding from the nose. The prisoner was there and SMITH; the latter drunk. Witness did not stop long, and went away without seeing any more. He did not tell MR. RYAN anything further. He could not swear what he had told MR. RYAN. What he had then said was the same story he had told MR. RYAN. The Bench ordered the witness to be taken into custody. The prisoner was then sentenced to be sent to the 3rd class of the Factory for six months and her ticket cancelled, as there was not evidence enough to send the case to a jury.
THOMAS GOOT was then placed at the bar charged with perjury, when MR. RYAN deposed that the prisoner had on the previous day, told him, in the presence of MRS. CARRINGTON, that he was in the house of JANE WILSON and had seen SMITH strike her, and that she happened to have a knife in her hand with which she was peeling potatoes, and that in defending herself, she accidentally wounded SMITH. Some further evidence was gone into, but from the defective manner in which the prisoner’s deposition had been taken, the Bench were unable to bring home a charge of perjury, and the prisoner was discharged with a severe reprimand.
CITATION
Female Factory Online (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of JANE WILSON,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18440928/, accessed [insert current date].
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