BRANDING AN APPRENTICE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 673, 27 June 1882, Page 2

BRANDING AN APPRENTICE.

A most extraordinary trial was decided recently in the Queen’s Bench Division, before Mr Justice Denman and a common jury. It appeared that a young man named Devenish, twenty years of age, who was the plaintiff, was apprenticed to a plumber named Tubb, at Aldershott. In May last the daughter of Tubb, a young lady of sixteen years of age, found the plaintiff in his shirt under her bed, where two young children were sleeping, and to which she was about to retire; she in going upstairs saw the light in her room put out, and heard someone move. She thereupon called her father and said that someone was under her bed. On her father going upstairs he found it was his apprentice, John Devenish, He dragged John out, and dragged him to his own room, and laid him on his own bed, and then sent for Dr Manders, a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, who came immediately he was called, and found John Devenish insensible. The doctor

asked for a horsewhip, and finding that Tubb had not that instrument of torture, he ordered a poker to be made red-hot, and then to put the offending John to the test, to see whether he was shamming or or not he touched him with the red-hot poker eleven times on various parts of the body. The plaintiff was then made to dress, and turned out of doors in company with a policeman, who, hearing what Tubb had to say, refused to take plaintiff in charge, but protected him till the morning, when he went home to his parents. The medical men who attended to him bore testimony to the fact that when he came home he had eleven burns on his body, and the jury saw eleven scars. The plaintiff’s story was that he had a book which he

wanted to read in bed, but when hi got into his bed his light went out seeing another room with a light in it he went into it to get one. As he dk so he heard someone coming upstairs and thinking it was Mrs Tubbs, he being in his night shirt, blew out the light and got into bed, intending tc come out again as soon as she had passed. Instead of it being Mrs Tubb, it turned out to be Miss Tubb, the fair damsel of sixteen, who screamed for her father, and then occured what is

above stated. The defence set up in justification was that the plaintiff was intoxicated, and that he went under the bed for an immoral purpose. The doctor admitted touching plaintiff up with the poker, and considered he was justified in doing so, but he said the poker was not very hot as he could bear his finger against it, and that he only gave him just one touch. The jury, however, in the face of the evidence,"declined to believe the doctor and gave damages against the defendant for LBS, and against Tubb for L 25 for breach of the articles of indenture. The Judge gave costs against the doctor, but not against Tubb. The jury added that they did not believe that the plaintiff went under the bed for my immoral purpose.