Cambridge Independent Press 14 Mar 1846: Frederick Barleyman guilty of theft
STEALING RABBITS — Frederick Hayles Barleyman, 19, of Trumpington, shoemaker, charged with stealing some tame live rabbits, the property of William Haslop — No counsel for the prosecution. — Mr. NAYLOR for the prisoner. The rabbits were taken out of a rabbit-hutch in the prosecutor’s garden. The prisoner offered them for sale to a man named Wilderspin, a pieman, at the Red Lion, in Trumpington, and repeated the offer on several days. Wilderspin at last mentioned it to Mr. Nichols the constable by whose direction he bought them of the prisoner. Cross-examined by Mr. NAYLOR: Does not use cats in his pies (a laugh). Does not use fowls in his pies. The allusion to the fowls was pointed to a charge of dishonesty respecting some fowls which had been made against the witness at a former period, but of which it turned out he was innocent. One of the rabbits, a sandy one, had its claws cut off. Mr. NAYLOR said, this rampant, tearing rabbit could not be identified by the deficiency of the claws, which had been cut off because it had a habit of scratching its locker, and for the same reason many other rabbits had their claws cut off. Verdict, Guilty. Six weeks’ imprisonment, and hard labor.