| | | | The Sad and Unfinished Story of Ellen Wright | On 30th December 1882, Ellen Huxtable, of Berrynarbour in North Devon married Sandford blacksmith James Wright. Twenty-four year old Ellen was the daughter of farmer and churchwarden John and Harriet (nee Perrin) Huxtable. 
Less than a month after the wedding Ellen was incarcerated in Exeter Prison, (left) where she would give birth to her first daughter. How did this newly married woman, from a respectable family find herself in such circumstances?
Around the time of their marriage husband James left the family business and moved to Swansea where he was working as a blacksmith, leaving his new bride with her parents. There were several Huxtable family members working in South Wales. Perhaps this prompted James to seek work there too. In any event his absence seems to have greatly upset his new wife. Did she know she was pregnant when he moved there or did the discovery contribute to her subsequent behaviour? What is certain is that she suddenly became desperate to be with her new husband. And this desperation drove her to a foolish crime. On 19th January 1883 she cashed a forged cheque for £30 (the equivalent of perhaps £1400 today) at the National Provincial Bank in Ilfracombe. Her actions were muddled, and betrayed an ignorance of the banking system. She was bound to be apprehended, and she was, almost immediately. She made no attempt to deny her crime. She claimed that nobody else had been involved, and that she needed the money to join her husband in Swansea; she had already sent her husband £2.
She appeared before Ilfracombe magistrates the next day, and was remanded to the County Assizes in Exeter the following week when she appeared before Mr Justice Grove. A medical certificate confirming the prisoner's pregnancy was presented. The prosecuting counsel said that before the offence the prisoner had borne a most irreproachable character and the officials of the National Provincial Bank would be glad if the judge could pass a merciful sentence. The judge said there had been a number of forgery cases that day, which suggested sentencing in the past had not been sufficiently severe. Clearly of the view that he was being lenient, he sentenced Ellen to 6 months imprisonment with hard labour.
The Nominal Register for Devon County Prison, Exeter records that Prisoner 860 Ellen Wright had two cuts across her left wrist. Was there anything more sinister about Ellen's desperation to join her husband? Or about her pre-nuptial pregnancy?
Daughter Lilian was born to Ellen Wright on 19th May 1883 in HM Prison, Exeter. Ellen and Lilian joined James in Wales after her release, and a second daughter Florence was born in Cardiff in 1886. By this time James was working as a signal man on the railway. After this Ellen disappears from the record. The children are brought up by their grandmother in Sandford. James reappears in the 1901 Census working as a railway porter in Bradford, Yorkshire. He settled in Bradford, and died there in about 1926. His daughter Florence joined him there in the early years of the 20th century. She married plumber Fred Rothera, and raised a family in Yorkshire. Daughter Lilian who had such an unhappy birth, went into domestic service in Muswell Hill, North London, and seems never to have married. But of Ellen I can find no further trace.
Download a more detailed version of Ellen's story here  | | | | The North Devon Savages | Great-Great-Great Aunt Harriet Frost had some strange daughters-in-law. They were members of the disreputable Cheriton family from the tiny parish of Nymet Rowland, who were characterised as the infamous North Devon Savages.
In 1869, a letter to the Times described their "Heathenism in Devon" -"the manner in which these people live is of the rudest, coarsest, and even savage-like character". The family were labelled "a terror and an abomination" to the district. Over the years they were to be the subject of much Press coverage, both national and local, and their activities were brought to the attention of the Home Secretary.
Patriarch of the family was farmer Christopher Cheriton, owner of Upcott, some 40 acres of freehold land. Christopher and his common law wife Mary Ann Bragg had flouted conventional standards by having their four children out of wedlock, though that was common enough. According to one account Christopher had rejected conventional mores after being spurned in love. The mate with whom he spent his life seems to have supported him in his chosen lifestyle. By about the mid 1850s the Cheritons had embarked on a course of extreme social degradation. The family comprised Christopher and Mary Ann, and children William, Charlotte, Eliza and Matilda, and at the height of their reign of terror there were grandchildren in their early teens and a clutch of babies. In a nearby parish, "on Whitestone Hill", Tedburn St Mary, was Christopher's brother Elias, living in an old barrel.
In 1854 Christopher appeared before the magistrates on a charge of assault. This seems to have been the first appearance in court. But over the next 25 years, members of the family were to appear before the courts over 65 times. They were charged with assaults, petty theft, poaching, non-payment of rates, allowing animals to stray (they weren't too fussy about whose land their livestock grazed on). Poaching in particular was a serious offence in those days, and when, in 1869, son William and friend George Bradford alias Tancock (who was to partner Charlotte) were convicted under dubious circumstances, they briefly became a cause celèbre, prompting debate in the national Press. Mary Ann, Eliza, Matilda, Charlotte and William all served prison sentences over the years, some several: all the family were fined on numerous occasions. But this was not just a criminal family. Indeed many of the charges brought against them were dismissed. It was their general lifestyle that marked them out.
Their clothes and persons were unkempt and unwashed. They lived in a hovel, in filth and squalor, in a kind of barn, with their animals. A contemporary account in 1874- "The building is not large, ... originally a farm-house, a granary, or merely a cow-house. It is perhaps forty feet long by twenty-five feet wide; its walls are apparently a mixture of lime, mud, and pebbles, and very thick; and the thatched roof is surmounted by a wide-mouthed chimney-opening, partly blown down. ... There are several apertures, designed and accidental; but the main opening...is a jagged hole about seven feet high and five wide, into which, by way of windowblind, ragged bundles of straw are piled...the ground floor of the hovel is at once the living-place, the cooking-place, the pig-stye, and the sleeping-place. Not a single article of furniture is contained within it; there is not even a bedstead. The family bed, on which repose savage old Christopher, Willie his middle-aged son, the old woman, the three strapping daughters, the big boy and the big girl, and the smaller fry, including the horrifying baby or babies, consists of an accumulation of foul straw, enclosed within rough-hewn posts driven into the earth." |  
The Cheriton's house, front and back, at Nymet Rowland, photographed in about 1860 by our relative William Hector. | Several accounts make reference to acts of vandalism against, and verbal abuse of their neighbours. There was a long-running feud with some of the local farmers. Landowner John Partridge took Mary Ann and Eliza to court for stealing turnips, and there seems to have developed a particular antipathy against Partridge and his family. In the same vein the family were extremely hostile towards the local parson - the Reverend Temple - whom they cursed roundly at every opportunity, abusing him and his new wife as they walked around the village. The family were foul-mouthed, abusive and aggressive.
They regularly worked in their fields in semi-nudity, the old man often wearing just a loin cloth, the women little more. Predictably it was their sexual immorality that outraged most Victorian commentators. The contemporary belief , implied in a number of articles and letters about the family, was that the children of the several daughters were the incestuous offspring of the males of the family, who all shared the communal bed. Between the three daughters there were at least eight children born without named fathers between 1855 and 1871. Witnesses declared that no men outside the family were known to have visited the daughters. Nonetheless given the condition in which they did their field work there can be no certainty about the bastards' parenthood. The women were regularly described as being coarse, with the voices of men.
Brother William was a big man, with matted whiskers and a long beard, and the sight of him was intimidating. He is said to have pursued a stranger through the country with an axe for nearly a mile! One day William was seen driving a horse whose collar he had decorated with the entrails of a sheep!
It should not be thought that the family were impoverished. Their land, their animals - at various times 4 horses, 29 sheep, pigs, 2 or 3 cows, 2 bullocks, 6 ducks - meant that they were much better off than agricultural labourers. But they chose to do no more than exploit their land and livestock on a subsistence basis only. With theft and extortion to supplement that.
Whilst it is evident that this was a wild, unconventional and lawless family, they seem to have been courteous to strangers who meant them no harm. And according to the pastor of the Independent Chapel in Lapford, they were frequent attenders there for worship. When the Rev Temple had been replaced as the incumbent of Nymet Rowland by the Rev Gutteres, it was reported that the family donned their Sunday best and worshipped at the parish church. (This apparently did not prevent them from allowing their animals to graze on the Rev Gutteres' tennis lawn, ruining it for the summer).
Perhaps not unsurprisingly their behaviour incited aggression in return - in 1878 four men were summonsed for stoning the Cheritons' house for over two hours. In 1879 a rick of wheat belonging to William was burned. Some of the charges against the family even appear to have been trumped up with the collusion of the constable, no doubt at the instigation of the local landowners, including John Partridge. In the 1870s there seems to have developed a concerted effort to rid the parish of the Cheritons. Unnecessary really, as Time intervened.
Despite their numerous illegitimate children, one by one the daughters left home to set up house with a partner, or to get married, each adding several children to their family with their partners. Charlotte moved out of the family bed pit initially to set up home with George Bradford alias Tancock in a nearby hay rick! Willoughby Farley - son of Matilda - was eventually to marry my second cousin 3x removed Mary Ann Drew. G-g-great aunt Harriet Frost was the stepmother of Eliza's husband John Drew, and mother of the husbands of two of Charlotte's daughters. (The convoluted sexual relations continued through the generations when John, a base son of Charlotte, married a daughter of Matilda, in 1890, by then called Virginia Farley after her stepfather. The bride was to die within 3 months. Ostensibly cousins, who knows who their father(s) was or were, though in all probability John was the son of George Tancock.) In 1880 matriarch Mary Ann (described as a foul-mouthed hag) died of bronchitis. Son William seems to have set up home with a partner Bessie in Zeal Monachorum. Now an old man, Christopher left the parish to live with one or other of his married daughters. By the 1881 census the savages had left: no Cheritons were living in Nymet Rowland.
An account of the Cheritons by Peter Christie - The True Story of the North Devon Savages - can be found in the Transactions of the Devonshire Association, Volume 124, 1992, pp 59-85. DOWNLOAD A CATALOGUE OF THE CASES AGAINST THE CHERITONS
An article from the Victorian Press can be found here. http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications4/strange-11.htm | | | | John Ashplant 1845-1901 | | Elizabeth Connibeer | | John Ashplant was a sad case. The demon drink turned him violent. His wife would hide in fear from him in the washhouse when he was drunk. Eventually she left him and took their young children with her to Crediton workhouse to escape his brutality. In 1899 and 1900 the minutes of the Board of Crediton Union Workhouse record the fact that John Ashplant was refusing to pay 5s maintenance for his two children, and was refusing to remove them from the workhouse and maintain them himself. The Board resolved to take action against him. John was summonsed, and received three gaol sentences for his failure to pay the maintenance. But Fate was to tragically intervene in the case of John. Shortly after his release from the third sentence, he was killed by a train. He was apparently struck whilst walking home to Crediton after working at Cowley Bridge. Accident or suicide - the coroner determined the former. | 
John Ashplant | Cousin James Conibeer's wife of less than 6 months, Elizabeth, nee Burgoyne, received 6 months hard labour with 4 weeks solitary, when she and her brother G. Burgoyne appeared at the Devon County Sessions in February 1832. Her brother had stolen two pairs of shoes valued at 4s from his master John Berry (thought to be a cordwainer), for which he was sentenced to one month hard labour, two weeks solitary and a whipping. The new Mrs Conibeer had feloniously received the shoes, knowing them to be stolen. | | | | Our Riotous Cousins ! | 
In the midnight hours of Saturday 30th October 1852 PCs Martin and Holway were patrolling in the West Quarter of Exeter, when they encountered a noisy crowd in Frog Street. With some difficulty the constables managed to disperse the crowd, but a short while later their attention was called to nearby West Street, where they found "the rabble of the city, behaving in a riotous manner" There were now some 20 or 30 men gathered, and amongst them, shouting abuse and about to start a fight, was James Cann, the nephew of our wrestling champion Abe Cann. PC Martin apprehended James, but the policeman was immediately set upon by Abraham Cann, who rescued his brother James. Abraham was himself arrested, and a man called Hartnoll came to the aid of the two policemen. But the three were outnumbered by the mob, some accounts stating there were almost 100 persons then present, and a George Lewis then rescued Abraham. PC Holway grabbed him, but was knocked down, and he was then obliged to use his staff to defend himself. About then mayhem broke out, and the mob set upon the two policemen and their helper. The battle seems to have raged around the streets of Exe Island, and things looked particularly bad for constable Martin. He had been knocked down and was surrounded by three or four men kicking his head and body. He cried out "Murder!" and Holway and Hartnoll managed to extricate him from the crowd, unconscious and bleeding.
The constables escaped to the safety of their nearby station house, all with injuries from kickings and beatings, but Martin in particular had been severely beaten, and was taken to hospital where he remained for a week, unable to speak or move.
West Street, Exeter | A number of the rioters were arrested in the days following the assaults, including brothers James and Abraham Cann. They were remanded in custody until the Exeter Quarter Sessions in January 1853. Seven men were charged with assaulting police, including Lewis and the Cann brothers. There were several witnesses to the various assaults, and the accused did not seem to have much of a defence. After three hours of deliberation, all seven were found guilty. Three of the defendants, including George Lewis, were sentenced to 12 months with hard labour, whilst Abraham and James Cann seem to have got off relatively lightly, with sentences of three months hard labour each.
Abraham and James were about 29 and 28 respectively at the time of their arrest, and both were skilled artisans - Abraham a coach painter and James a harness maker. They lived with their mother in Weight Court, off nearby Cowick Street. By the time of their arrest their father, James Cann, a wrestler himself, and a butcher, had been dead for three years, having been one of the few victims of Exeter's second cholera episode, in 1849. There is no evidence of father James living with his wife Thomasine, so perhaps the seven Cann children were brought up without the presence of a father. But nor is there evidence of either brother getting into trouble again. Both moved away from Exeter, Abraham staying for a while with James and his wife in London.
It is clear that like today, alcohol played its part in the unruly events of that night. The West Quarter and Exe Island were amongst the poorest parts of the city, the site of unsavoury workplaces, and overcrowded run-down dwellings, where the inhabitants made use of the many pubs and beer shops to take the edge off their often miserable lives. | | | | | Victim of Crime | | Cousin Ivy Berry suffered an unpleasant shock when she was awoken at quarter to midnight in October 1961. The 77 year-old retired school teacher, who was living in the Berry family house, Wisteria, Western road, Crediton, had been disturbed by a noise at the French window of her bedroom, where she saw a man standing behind a net curtain. He threatened to "bash her face in if she didn't tell him where there was money". Spotting a jewellery box in the bedroom, the man grabbed it and retreated through the window.
It seems his luck was out however. Outside the window was PC leslie Knight who had seen the man silhouetted against the light in the ground floor window. Perhaps the constable had his suspicions aroused by the man and followed him. Certainly his presence there was fortunate, for when the man came running out through the window, PC Knight arrested him. William Riley, of no fixed abode, was charged with breaking and entering, and stealing jewellery and articles to the value of £30.
Ivy seemed to have been much shaken by the incident. In less than 6 months she had died. | 
Wisteria, Western Road Crediton. On the former site of
Berry's building yard, the hose was occupied by various
Berry descendants until the late 1960s. | | | | | Miller Willing - revenge backfired! | | Richard Willing was born in Loddiswell in about 1820, eldest son of miller Richard and Amy Willing of New Mill, Loddiswell. Willings had been and continued to be farmers around Loddiswell for generations, but our Richard's father seems to have been the first of the family to become a miller. Son Richard determined to follow in his father's footsteps, and in 1841 he was working as a servant at Washbrook Mill, Dodbrooke, where Phillip Hingston was miller. Richard married Phillip's daughter Jane in 1843, by which time he had himself learned the trade and was a miller, at Chittlesford Mill, Halwell. Jane bore Richard two children, John and Dorothy, but she died in childbirth in 1845; the child Dorothy died too.
Richard did not grieve long. On 22 January 1846 he married Elizabeth Harley in Dean Prior. Elizabeth also bore Richard two children - Richard and Mary. In 1848 Richard and Elizabeth took on the lease of Lurgecombe Mill, Ashburton, where Elizabeth too died, in 1849, probably in childbirth again. Richard did not allow the grass to grow under his feet, and was remarried in a little over a year - this time to Susanna Sherwill, of Widecombe. The 1851 census finds Richard and Susanna still at Lurgecombe Mill, with 2 year-old Mary. Richard's sons are both with their grandparents in Loddiswell.
onse was to leave the country, more or less immediately. | 
Washbrook Mill, Dodbrooke
| 
Chittlesford Mill, Halwell |
Convicts in Kingston Penitentiary in 1875
Kingston Penitentiary
| Soon after this, disaster seems to have struck the family. By the beginning of July 1851, Richard was declared bankrupt. The bankruptcy hearings were completed by the end of July. Richard's respWe next meet him in Canada East (Quebec) in the 1851 census, which in Canada was in fact taken in January 1852. Son Richard and daughter Mary accompanied Richard and Susanna to the New World, but eldest son John Hingston Willing stayed with his grandfather in Loddiswell. The Willings were sharing a log cabin with another emigrant family in the parish of Saint Malachie, in Beauharnois County at the time of the census. Richard described himself as a miller, and it is at this trade that he seems to have worked in Canada. But in a few years he was in trouble again. By the 1861 census he was in Frontenac County, Canada West - incarcerated in the provincial penitentiary in Portsmouth Village (now Kingston Penitentiary). He had been tried in April 1858 for arson. The crime was committed in Leeds and Grenville, a nearby county in Ontario. Richard had been employed as a miller by Ormond Jones - a prominent Brockville citizen. In November 1857 the Jones mill, at Yonge Mills, was burned down, under suspicious circumstances. The fire had blazed in a part of the mill where there was no source for flames. Nobody was injured, but a considerable amount of money was lost on the under-insured mill. It emerged at Richard's trial that he had been sacked by Jones for misconduct, and had since been heard to utter threats, on several occasions, against his former employer. Suspiciously Richard had made arrangements to leave the district at about the time the fire was set, but the weather had disrupted his plans. The jury were satisfied that he had carried out his threats against his former boss. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
The prison regime in Kingston, harsh by our standards, but not for the times, allowed no talking; Richard seems to have found it particularly difficult to comply with the regulations. During his sentence he was often punished for his disruptive behaviour. He seems to have been, like Chaucer's Miller, a garrulous man with a coarse nature. His sins "talking in Church the whole time of the Morning Service" and later "for continuing most disgusting conduct purposely breaking wind". His punishments were mostly bread and water diet, or loss of bedding: on one occasion long term solitary, and finally in April 1865 "four dozen lashes with the cats and be confined to the Dark Cell till further orders " Perhaps this did for him. He died in the penitentiary on 5th June 1865, of consumption according to the burial record, but of typhoid according to the prison autopsy. Perhaps a death by typhoid was to be kept secret. He was buried the same day in a common grave.
Thanks to Jane Sweet for her dogged and diligent research, and to Brockville Museum for their assistance. | Richard had chosen a formidable victim when he sought revenge against Ormond Jones. He was one of the influential sons of a founding family of Brockville - that of the Hon. Charles Jones. The Jones family had been early settlers in Upper Canada. Charles acquired property in Leeds County on the undeveloped shores of the St Lawrence River. He developed the land into a successful trading business, where the town of Brockville would grow up.
Later with his brother he built a five storey stone flour mill at nearby hamlet Yonge Mills - it was the largest mill in Canada when it was built. Trade from the mill helped the village grow into a thriving community such that it outgrew nearby Brockville. Son Ormond inherited the mill. Like his father before him, Ormond was a successful business man, local politician and lawyer. He ultimately became a judge. After the fire, the mill was never rebuilt: derelict for many years, it was converted into farm buildings. By 1966 the community of Yonge Mills was all but abandoned, and the village was swept aside for the building of Highway 401. | | | | The Farthings - a Family of Felons?  | | We first encounter Thomas Farthing at the Quarter Sessions in Taunton Castle in 1819, when he was found guilty of stealing " ten hundred weight of oak cleft wood, value 7s 6d, two hundred weight of elm cleft woof value 1s 6d, one iron cross axe value 4s and one hogshead cask value 10 s" - a value totalling more than two weeks wages for an agricultural labourer of the time. Thomas was sentenced to 12 months hard labour and 1s fine. He and his family would certainly not be regarded as major villains these days, indeed we would regard this as petty theft. However, the family seemed to have planned some of their crimes; others were opportunities seized, and one might suspect they always had an eye for the main chance.
Thomas was not the only member of his family to acquire a criminal record. In 1825 his wife Mary was on remand in Ilchester gaol for "want of sureties" - we do not know her crime. In 1827 she was again on trial, this time for stealing for stealing 5 earthenware jugs at Wincanton Fair, aided and abetted by her 12 year-old daughter Sarah, and "Aunt Ann Read".
Sarah was judged to have been under the influence of her mother and was freed. Mary, however, was committed to trial at the Quarter Sessions, where she was sentenced to three months in Wilton House of Correction. |
Taunton Castle
| In 1828, son Charles, aged 16, was sentenced to four months gaol, with two weeks solitary and twice whipped for stealing hay. He was released in August 1828. Thomas seems to have taken his paternal duties serious enough to try to help his son, as he was charged with "feloniously rescuing out of the custody of James Willis, tythingman [constable], one Charles Farthing, who had been committed for a felony". Thomas's attempt was unsuccessful, as he appeared at the same Wells Quarter sessions as his son, on 14th April 1828, when he was also sentenced to four months imprisonment, and to be twice whipped.
Later, in 1836, daughter Frances was sentenced at Wells Quarter Sessions to two calendar month's imprisonment, apparently for assault. But by the time of Frances's imprisonment, the Farthing family had already paid a heavy price for their criminal activities. |
Prison hulk at Devonport
| Six years earlier in 1830, Thomas had been accused of stealing 50 sheaves of newly reaped wheat belonging to John Gatehouse, gentleman of North Cheriton, Somerset.
Unfortunately for Thomas his next door neighbour James Holly testified against him.
"I heard a cart stop at the prisoner's door about 3 in the morning of yesterday ... and saw the prisoner with the cart ... loaded with wheat. I saw the prisoner carry the wheat ... into his house. When I got up afterwards about a quarter before 5, I saw the prisoner's daughter brushing the wheat which had fallen from the sheaves from the door. On seeing me she drew back"
Inside the house attempts had been made to disguise the stolen grains, as leazed corn (gathered by villagers from the ground after the harvest), and by mixing in poorer quality grain with the stolen wheat. But 4 sacks of wheat were identified as that belonging to Gatehouse. This had all the appearance of a calculated crime.
Thomas was convicted and was sentenced to be transported "beyond the seas" for life, on 30th October 1830.
The sentence was not to be carried out. In November 1830 Thomas was sent to await transportation in the prison hulk Captivity at Devonport. Conditions on the hulks were appalling. They were filthy, and disease-ridden. Epidemics of typhoid and cholera were commonplace. As many as a third of the prisoners held on hulks died of disease . Thomas Farthing was one of those who succumbed. His death is recorded on 30 June 1831.
The rest of the family survived, and from Frances's line a Farthing was to marry a Heard four generations later. | | | | | George Bubear - Champion Fraud |  | | At the end of his sporting career, cousin George Bubear (1859-1927) - professional sculler and twice Champion of England - seems to have fallen prey to the temptations of "easy money". At his peak he had won £500-£600 in prizes per year, at a time when the average wage was about £50 per year. No doubt his backers took the lion's share of the prizes, but George must have been comfortably off , not least because he was also working as a Licensed Victualler for much of his career. Over the years there had been several barely veiled accusations in the Press that some of George's races had been fixed - probably a common occurrence in those days, in a barely regulated professional sport where enormous sums of money were gambled. | So it is likely that George was not averse to sharp practice where money was involved. Perhaps he saw the opportunity presented to him in 1898 as no more than an extension of match fixing. Though it must be said that several victims of his fraud bore witness to his previous upright character during the trial.
The fraud was quite a complicated one, but essentially was a variation on the past-posting scam operated in The Sting.
George was persuaded by bookmaker's clerk Edward Barker to make arrangements with several bookmakers to place bets by telegram. Barker, aided by George or other accomplices, would visit a number of post offices and hand in a batch of 15 or 20 telegrams, asking that they be time stamped and sent as soon as possible. After the post office clerk had time stamped and then started to send the batch (which would take the clerk some considerable time to code) Barker or George would interrupt and ask for the unsent telegrams to be returned to them on the pretext of making a correction. The telegrams were addressed to bookmakers, containing bets that George was placing on races that were about to start. The names of the horses had been left off the last telegrams in the batch. A confederate would determine by telephone which horse had won the race, and pass the name on to his colleagues in the post office. The winning horse's name was inserted in the telegrams. These were then returned to the post office clerk and were sent stamped with the earlier time. In theory the clerks were supposed to start the whole process again with a different time stamp when the sending of telegrams had been so interrupted, but in practice they either did not know the procedure or felt it to be too onerous. The first telegrams in the batches, sent on time, were bogus. The doctored telegrams arrived late, but the time stamp indicated that they had been sent before the race started so they appeared legitimate. Some of the bookmakers paid up. Most were suspicious of the long delayed arrivals of the telegrams, often thirty or forty minutes after the end of the race, and after the stamped time. Several challenged George, so he backed off and would not take any winnings if they thought there was something wrong with the bets "but there are two or three of us in the syndicate, and I have already paid the others so I will lose out". But he seems to have lost his nerve when suspected. Several of the bookmakers were not content with that, and reported their suspicions. In consequence on George and Barker were arrested in June 1899 and sent for trial at the Old Bailey. The case was heard at the end of October, and both men were found guilty, Barker being sentenced to 6 months with hard labour, and the sentencing of George deferred. A clergyman and the Kingston MP, Mr Skewes-Cox, spoke as character witnesses for George. The latter said that he had known Bubear for 10 years and that he was a man of excellent character and a very simple-minded man. The MP was sternly rebuked by the Recorder who said that as a solicitor he should know better than to abuse his position as an MP by giving testimony that was contrary to the rules of evidence (that George was a simple-minded man). He had no right to come there to champion a constituent.
George was sentenced in November 1899 to three months imprisonment with hard labour. | |
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