MAYOR’S COURT.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2720, 4 November 1871, Page 2

MAYOR’S COURT.

This Day. (Before his Worship the Mayor.) DRUNKENNESS. Ann Hardy was fined 40s, or fourteen days’ imprisonment. OBSCENE LANGUAGE. Alary Buddings was fined LlO, or three mouths’ imprisonment. ALLEGED THEFT. Anne Ockenden, on remand, was charged with stealing Ll6 in money, and several articles, the property of Quin Ling. Air Stout conducted the prosecution, .and Air Howorth appeared for the prisoner. After hearing the evidence, his Worship said iu his opinion there was not sufficient evidence of felonious intent on the part of the prisoner to justify him in committing her for trial. The evidence as to the loss of the money rested solely on that of the prosecution. No money that could be identified had been found on the prisoner—indeed, so far as the evidence went, there was only the evidence of the prosecutor that he had placed it in the box produced. The evidence on this point, therefore, was very unsatisfactory. It was also in evidence that the prosecutor had in his house a box much stronger, more securely fastened, and better adapted for the storage of valuable articles than the one produced ; and it seemed strange that the latter should have been selected. Again, there were the facts that the box had been taken away by the prisoner in open nay, and in the presence of a friend of the prosecutor—that no secret had been made of it—and that the articles alleged to been stolen were placed in the house where prisoner was known to have gone to, and without the slightest attempt at concealment. He could therefore come to no other conclusion than this : That the prisoner had been living with the prosecutor as his wife for four years ; and the articles alleged to have been stolen were of such a kind that a woman would be calculated to consider her own, al though they might not have been actually presented to her. Besides, if the prosecutor had lost Ll6 as alleged, it was unlikely that the interval of time between the Thursday on which he discovered his loss and the following Monday would have been allowed to elapse before he gave information to the police or lodged a complaint. Taking all the circumstances into consideration, the case was one that ought never to have come before the Court. The prisoner was then discharged. There was a case of Ockenden v. Quin, being a charge of using threatening language, but as the defendant said he had no intention of molesting the complainant, it was withdrawn.