TEN WEEKS’ INCARCERATION ON A FALSE CHARGE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5439, 2 September 1878, Page 3

TEN WEEKS’ INCARCERATION ON A FALSE CHARGE.

(From the Sydney if ail, August 17.) On the evening of the 26th June, constable Qnin, acting on information received, proceeded to the residence of a Mrs. Stephenson, in Fowler-place, where he found a woman named Padbury suffering from injuries which, she alleged, were caused by Mrs. Stephenson (her sister) throwing her out of an upstairs window,' Quin, of course, took Padbury to the infirmary, when she was found to be suffering from a broken arm, and where she remained until yesserday. Mrs. Stephenson was taken into custody, and charged with having wilfully and maliciously inflicted upon Louisa Padbury grievous bodily harm, and, being unable to give bail, was kept in ensfody until yesterday, when Louisa Padbury, having been discharged from the infirmary, attended and gave "evidence against her. She deposed that she is a manned woman, living apart from her husband. The prisoner is her sister, with whom, on the 20th June last, she resided. She was in a weakly state, hiving only a fortnight previously left the infirmary, when h-r sister took her in until she should recover strength ; on that day the prisoner left her at homo, with a strict injunction not to leave the house, but she did leave the house for a short time, and during her absence the prisoner returned ; for this cause she abused her, and beat her with her fists ; she (witness) wanted to leave the house, but prisoner would not allow her ; she locked the door, and followed her from room to room, and upstairs to another room, pushing and beating her, until at length, in order to escape her violence (she having also said that but for the law she would kill her, or something to that effect) she got out of the window and jumped to the ground, a distance of some twenty feet or so, and broke her arm, she lay there until some one carried her into the house, where she remained until the policeman came and removed her to the Infirmary, where she remained until Friday morning, but she is still very weak. In reply to questions by prisoner the witness said that she (prisoner) was in the room when she went out of the window. In reply to the usual question prior to a committal, Stephenson said that she had witnesses to call. Frances Louisa Padbury, a girl of apparently fourteen to sixteen years of age, deposed that prosecutrix is her mother ; that she lives with a sister at Woolloomooloo, and on the 26th June was at her aunt’s ghouse in Fowler-place, where her mother was then staying ; her mother was drunk ; she saw her aunt strike her mother once in the kitchen, whereupon her mother went upstairs, and she (witness) accompanied her ; her mother then seized her by the hair, •and violently throw her down ; her screams brought her aunt upstairs, who, finding that she could not extricate her from her mother’s grasp of her hair, called to her assistance a mau named Johnson, who was downstairs ; he came and she was rescued ; prisoner and she (witness) went downstairs, leaving Johnson with her mother; prisoner did not either strike or push her mother upstairs ; a short time afterwards, sitting near the window in the downstairs room, she saw the shadow of something pass the window, and she called out to the prisoner, who was in the kitchen, that her mother must have thrown either a bed or herself out of the window. Frederick Johnson corroborated this evidence, and the prisoner was discharged, having been incarcerated on a groundless charge. She was allowed bail on the first day, but was unable to procure sureties.