Cambridge Chronicle 2 Mar 1861: Comment on William Rayner and trial for stealing a sheep
TRUMPINGTON. - Sheep stealing — In our police reports will be found a daring case of night sheep-stealing from a field near this village, in the occupation of Mr. Toller. The supposed thief, a man named William Rayner, was committed for trial at the Sessions on Saturday last, when the case was almost clearly established against him. The police have for long cast suspicious looks on this man as being concerned in similar nefarious transactions, but up to the time of this robbery nothing has transpired against him to warrant this apprehension. The chief proofs against him are that the carcass of a sheep, cut up in joints of quite a novel description, was found under the boards in an upper room of his house; that the footprints near the place where the animal was stolen correspond with his; and that the cord of his trousers corresponded with an impression made where the animal was slaughtered.