1786-02-04 (static/transcriptions/1786/02/028.jpg)

The World.
Wedn: 20 Febr. 1787

LAW INTELLIGENCE
OLD BAILEY.
SATURDAY.
The following Prisoners were Convicted.
David Ingram for picking the pocket of John Crook; James Kennedy for stealing a wooden door hung to the house of Henry Dawson. Quere, If this is not a fixture to the freehold; and, therefore, incapable of being as such, the subject of larceny. Charles Shaw, for a highway robbery on William Hughes; John Walker and John Evans, for a highway robbery on William Stevenson; Daniel Brian for stealing a muslin frock, the property of Sukey Walker; and Elizabeth Sedgwick, for wilfully, maliciously, and feloniously setting on fire two barns and a stable, belonging to John Taylor, of Feltham, in Middlesex.
This last case is, perhaps, as extraordinary as ever appeared before a Court of Criminal Judicature. The prisoner lived as a servant to Mr. Taylor, who is a farmer; she was in perfect friendship and cordiality with every part of the family, seeming contented with her situation, very attentive and industrious in her duty; free from any the most distant degree, of possible suspicion, of being capable of doing any harm or injury whatsoever; and in the complete and perfect possession of her senses. Yet it appeared, by her own voluntary confession “That on Sunday, 10th December last, she went to the henhouse of her master with a lighted candle; that climbing upon some straw, it gave way, that the candle fell out of the candlestick, buried itself among the straw, and appeared to be extinguished; that she returned into the house, when in a few minutes the hen-house and adjoining barn were all in flames, and were burned to the ground; that she told her master she had seen a man in the yard with a lighted candle, but that she had concealed from the accident of her candle having fallen amongst the straw. – That on the next Sunday, viz. 17th December, as she was making the toast for tea, the design of setting fire to another barn of her master’s suddenly rushed into her mind; that she had in vain struggled to suppress the malicious dictate, and finding it unconquerable, she took, after having made the toast, a long iron candlestick with a candle in it, which she lighted, and changed into a very old flat candlestick, which had been out of use, and going to her master’s barley barn, she placed the candle under the straw, and immediately returned into the house.” It appeared from the other parts of the evidence, that after her return she sat down to her own tea with perfect composure, during which time the barn, stables, out-houses, with all the horses, and other cattle therein, became an unextinguishable conflagration, and every part of the premises, and stock both live and dead, were in a few minutes entirely consumed to ashes–save only a fat hog, which it appeared the prisoner had released from its confinement before she had returned to the house; and here it is proper to mention that Mr. Taylor’s valuable property was entirely un incurred. To [ILL]