This week we will give an example of the flowery language used in court all those years ago.

April, 1823 – how criminal court language sounded then:

‘In this year, John Wakefield of Great Budworth was charged with burglariously breaking open the dwelling-house of Elizabeth Byram in Hartford and stealing therefrom the sum of four pounds and fifteen shillings in copper (about £634.00 today).

‘The first witness, in this case, was Mrs Elizabeth Byram, a very sanctimonious looking lady who had a grocer’s shop attached to her house in Hartford.

‘She gave her evidence with as much clearness and perspicuity as if she had been studying her part from the day of the burglary to the day of trial.

‘The lady deposed that she lived at some place near Northwich; that she keeps a shop there’.

A description of her wrapping the money in papers was given. ‘At ten o clock, she went to bed without any presentiment of what was to happen, and we hope she slept comfortably. The next morning (industrious lady), she rose before the day began to dawn. When she had struck a light, she could perceive that an aperture had been made in the window of what she called a house. She found that a pane of glass had been removed and that the aperture was big enough to allow a man to enter.

‘Footprints were leading towards the shop which was separated from the house by a door which was not locked; and lo! upon going into the shop, she saw that the paper-wrapped copper coin had been removed.

‘In the course of the day, in consequence with some suspicions which the learned Counsel would not suffer her to gratify the court, she sent for John Wakefield, and on taking him into her house, requested him to sit down and told him that he was in the hands of a friend.

‘One that would not harm him – here, the learned Counsel stopped the lady’s oration. We cannot help regretting that fairness towards the prisoner required this interruption of speech which needed much edification and would have been a fine specimen of elocution in the narrative style, from which we should have learned.

“What drugs, what charms,

“What conjuration and what magic.”

‘She used to gain his confession, but we were denied all this; and only learned that in consequence of what she said to him at that interview, he brought her back fifteen papers of coin of the nineteen that she had lost. He offered to make up the other four by instalments’.

The Judge summed up the evidence of the jury, who returned a verdict of GUILTY, the sentence of DEATH was immediately passed upon the prisoner.