A PROBLEM FOR THE JURY.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 22, Issue 90, 21 November 1911, Page 2

A PROBLEM FOR THE JURY.

A curious case of alleged theft was a good deal discussed in the time of Mr. Justice Duller.

A lady of highly respectable family and station, resident for the season at Bath, entered the shop of one of the most considerable drapers of that city, and purchased some trifling articles. She also asked to see some pieces of expensive lace. Some were shown to her j and while apparently examining the quality of different pieces she was seen by one of the assistants at another counter to abstract a nd secrete one of the cards. She was allowed to leave the shop J was instantly followed, brought back, and the card of lace found on her. A constable was sent for, and the lady was given in charge. On being brought before the magistrate, the charge was investigated, and the proof being deemed sufficiently strong to warrant a committal, the accused was committed for trial, the prosecutor and witnesses being bound over to appear and give evidence at the next assizes.

Various efforts were mads to induce the shopkeeper to forego the prosecution, but he resisted every inducement. He had prosecuted others whose poverty had prompted their offences, and he refused to screen one who had no such temptation to dishonesty.

The assizes approached, and public excitement ran high at tho prospect of a lady-thief being arraigned at tho bar of a public tribunal. Some time before the assizes a iady of apparently high respectability entered the shop of the prosecutor and made several trifling purchases. Among other articles she bought some lace. These were packed up and paid for, and the lady was preparing to depart, when, taking up her muf! and placing her hand in it, she with apparent consternation drew forth a card of lace ! Her indignation knew no bounds. She would not be satisfied till she had called the attention of every person in the shop to the fact that a card of lacc had been placed in her mufl by someone. The card bore the private mark of the shopkeeper, it was admitted ; it was also admitted that she had not purchased it, but as to how it had came in the lady’s muff that was a mystery which no one would undertake to solve.

The trial of the lady who stood committed on the charge of stealing a card of lace from the same shop came on, and the evidence in support of the charge was adduced. The lady in whose muff the card of lace was so mysteriously found was, of course, produced as a witness on behalf of the accused lady. The prosecutor and the shopmen were cross-examined as to the circumstances of tho card of lace which was discovered in the lady’s muff, and were compelled to admit the fact.

Fortified by such presumptive evidence, the jury assumed that the card of lace which the lady at the bar stood charged with stealing had been surreptitiously introduced into her muff by one of the shopmen. The lady was at once acquitted, and retired from the court amid the sympa-? thies of friends, and cheers of the public.

The storekeeper, it may be added, was extremely injured, for few take the trouble to reflect on and compare facts. He dismissed the shopman who served the second lady, and who, very strangely, happened to bo the same who had served the lady whom he prosecuted. However, the discharged shopman managed to find the means of setting up in business. There were those who declared that the whole of the second I: - a was adroitly planned as a der.,l r to obtain the acquittal of a Iftdy-tbi I. —"Engl'sh Illustrated Magazine.”