HANTS SUMMER ASSIZES.

(Before Mr. Justice MELLOR)

…

     Adelaide Thorn was indicted for a burglary in the house of Cornelius Goater, at Buriton, and stealing a silver watch, on the 3rd of May. Mr. Clarke was counsel for the prosecution.
This was a singular case. The prosecutor and prisoner were brother and sister. When Goater came down in the morning of the 4th of May, he saw that a back window was open. A pane of glass had been taken out, so that a person could open the window and get into the house. He went into the front room, and missed two watches that he had left on the table the night before. He also found that a person had been through a gap in the hedge of a field at the back of his house. He suspected the prisoner, who had been living in his house for four months, and had only recently left. The police set to work, and the prisoner was found some miles from Petersfield. She was accused of taking the watch; she denied having taken it. She was asked to turn out her pockets; she did so, and there was no watch there. She was asked if she had anything in her bosom; she said she had not. The policeman caught hold of her arm and in her hand he found the watch. She said it was hers as much as it was her brother's.
The JUDGE said there seemed to be something strange respecting the watch, and he asked the prosecutor how he became possessed of it.
The prosecutor said that it was his.
The JUDGE asked him how it was, and from whom he had received it?
The prosecutor at first said that it was his wife's, and that his father had given it to her.
The JUDGE asked whether his father had made a will?
The prosecutor said, no, but the watch was his, because he was his father's heir.
The JUDGE told him that he was quite wrong; the watch would not pass to him as his heir.
The prisoner, in her defence, said the watch was her's. Her father, who had died in her arms, had given it to her. Her brother was then abroad, and when he came home he married his father's widow, and then they claimed the watch; but she had had it in her possession for some days, and had not broken into the house to get it.
The JUDGE told her if the watch was her's there was a remedy for her to obtain it.
     The jury acquitted the prisoner.