ELOPEMENT AND ROBBERY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 1009, 8 December 1881, Page 4

ELOPEMENT AND ROBBERY.

A remarkable case of elopement and robbery was investigated recently in a London court. The prosecutor, a dry goods dealer carrying on business m Islington, stated that he let the upper floor of his house to the prisoner, a cabman, who, together with his three children, had occupied the house for about three years. Of late his tenant had got in arrears with his rent, and was notified to leave. He left, but not content with taking away his own furniture, he also moved off with the prosecutor’s wife, her three children, and a considerable portion of the goods in the store. A detective soon discovered that the prisoner had rented a store in a distant part of London, where he had started in business with the stolen goods. When the arrest was made the prisoner was at dinner with the purloined wife and the two sets of children. The woman remarked that she considered that she had a right to the stock taken from her husband’s store, as she had worked hard in that establishment. Her whilom husband disputed this, and also considered that he had some claim on the live stock of three children. When “ cabby ” was removed to be cast into a dungeon deep, his consort threw her arms around his neck, and pathetically observed that she was ready to die with him. The police, however, would not consent to such a sacrifice. They only wanted the cabman, and he was sentenced to hard labour- for twenty months. This punishment was only for the robbery of the dry goods. The elopement did not influence the severity of the sentence either way.