Notes for: John Nichols
From the Bury and Norwich Post, 3 Apr 1829: On Friday afternoon a fire broke out at Trumpington, which destroyed the roof of three tenements and the gable end of one of them. It was occasioned by the letting off of a gun, by the proprietor of the cottages, Mr Nicholls (sic), a blacksmith.
The Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, 3 April, continues: Mr Nicholls, a blacksmith, who had been sowing his garden with seed, and therefore discharged the piece with the view of frightening the sparrows; he had imprudently used some old rag as wadding, which fell upon the thatch of the cottages and occasioned the fire. The damage would undoubtedly have been more extensive, but for the very speedy arrival of the Norwich Union fire-engine, which was also followed by several others from Cambridge.
In addition, the Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 28 Mar 1829, has: A small house was consumed by fire yesterday (Friday) afternoon, at Trumpington; situate near to the blacksmith's shop, in whose occupation we understand it was; the damage was confined to the premises.
Cambridge Chronicle 12 Jul 1833:
Charles Wilson was charged with assaulting George (actually John - ed.) Nicholls, the constable of Trumpington, in the execution of his duty. - The prosecutor was sent for to remove the prisoner from a beer-shop at Trumpington, where he was making a disturbance, and in endeavouring to do so, the prisoner struck him a violent blow and afterwards seized him by the collar and burst his neckcloth in two. He denied that he said he "owed him an old grudge," or that he would "fix him." - The use of these expressions was attempted to be shewn for the defence, which signally failed - guilty, four calendar month’s imprisonment.
Cambridge Chronicle 27 Jul 1844:
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.
Cambridge Independent Press 14 Mar 1846:
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.
In 1829 he bought the central part of land in High Street (no. 32 on Inclosure Award map) from James Wallis. In 1840 he bought the southern part from James Marshall. In 1851 he bought the northern part from James Wallis (son of the first James). After his death in 1864, the land was all sold to Henry Williams Pemberton Esq and Revd Edward Franks Hodgson in 1869