Cambridge Chronicle 27 Jul 1844: William Smith acquitted of stealing from William Dawes
PRISONERS.(Before Baron Alderson.)
William Smith, aged 29, of Trumpington, shoemaker, was indicted for having, on the night of the 3rd, or morning of the 4th of March last, feloniously broken and entered the counting-house of William Dawes, carpenter and builder, at Trumpington, and stolen therefrom five pictures, a pistol, 14 centre bits, an elastic shaving-machine, a saw, a frock-coat, two musical snuff-boxes, and other articles. Mr. BURCHAM prosecuted, and Mr. PRENDERGAST defended the prisoner. — William Dawes was in his counting-house on the afternoon of Sunday, the 3rd of March, when everything was in a safe and proper state: next morning the whole place was in confusion: he missed the various articles named in the indictment. The door was locked on the Monday morning, and it did not appear how an entrance had been effected; the lock was a very common one. Prisoner was in the habit of being occasionally on his premises. About a fortnight after the robbery, in a conversation with prisoner, he said he had the things, but he found them near Headland’s garden. — Mr. PRENDERGAST cross-examined prosecutor with a view of showing that the place broken into was not “a counting-house,” but in this he failed. The men in prosecutor’s employ had been on the premises on the Monday morning before he discovered the robbery, and they were in the habit, but not without the knowledge of himself or wife, of taking the key of the counting-house to take out nails, &c — John Nicholls, parish-constable of Trumpington, searched prisoner’s house on the 26th of March, and he said he found the things first in Trumpington-street, and then in Silver-street, at 4 o’clock, in the afternoon, in a brown paper parcel: the pistol, he said, he borrowed of a man at Cambridge, but he did not know where he lived. Found none of the property in prisoner’s house. — George Hayward, landlord of the Bell public-house, Cambridge, deposed to the prisoner having offered various of the articles stolen for sale at his house, towards the end of May. — James Hellit, shoemaker, of Granchester, deposed to the prisoner having, about the 19th or 20th of May, offered to sell him a brass-barrelled pistol, first for 1s 6d and then for 1s. — Thomas Whittacker, picture-dealer, Cambridge, bought several of the pictures lost, from a person like the prisoner, in March, — Edward Morris, bookseller and picture-dealer, had some of the pictures offered for sale in March, by a person whom he could not identify. — Charles Wilson, gamekeeper to Colonel Pemberton, about a quarter before 2 on the morning of the 4th of March, saw prisoner in the street at Trumpington, about 70 yards from prosecutor’s house. — His Lordship thought there was no case for the jury; the prisoner was therefore acquitted.