The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

 

273.   SARAH the wife of John HAMMOND was indicted for stealing a pair of linen sheets, value 10 s. a pillow, value 6 d. a linen pillow case, value 12 d. and a small bundle of rags, value 6 d. the property of   John Sheppard , April 13th .

  ANN SHEPPARD sworn.

My husband is an apothecary ; we live on  Saffron-hill . On the 13th of April, between twelve and one in the day, I heard a rustling in the passage. I saw the prisoner just going out at the door with a bundle in her lap; I called to her, and asked her where she had been; she said to a gentlewoman up stairs; she said she must go up to her again. She went up and knocked at the door, and the gentlewoman who lodges there (   Mary Porter ) bid her come in. She asked if one Mrs. Price lodged there? The gentlewoman said no. I then went up and asked her what she had in her lap; she said what she had was her own. I desired to see it? She opened her apron, and immediately dropped them. I locked her and the lodger together into the

dining-room, and went down and sent for a constable. The things mentioned in the indictment were the things she had in her apron. She had taken them out of my two-pair-of-stairs room. She said before the justice, that she bought them of a Jew.

(They were produced in court by the constable and deposed to by the prosecutrix.)

  MARY PORTER sworn.

I lodge in the one-pair-of-stairs room, in the prosecutor's house. I saw the things taken from a woman. I was in such a flurry I cannot swear that it was the prisoner.

PRISONER's DEFENCE.

I deal in old clothes. I bought these things of a man on Saffron-hill.

GUILTY .

Tried by the Second Middlesex Jury before Mr. RECORDER.

[Whipping. See summary.]