A History of Preston
in Hertfordshire
ASSAULT. Three young men named T. Sharpe. W Watson and C Chalkley (see below) were
charged with assaulting Thomas and Henry Sharp, two brothers. Chalkley did not appear,
his mother said the summons had not been served on him. Thomas Sharpe said on the
night of the 23rd of December, he and his brother were in the Bull public house at
Gosmore. They left shortly after eleven and when they got outside they were followed
by the three prisoners and were knocked down and very much ill-
MANSLAUGHTER AT HITCHIN. William Winch (aged 33, born at Preston and living at Preston Green in 1861) was charged with the manslaughter of Christopher Chalkley ( aged 23, born at Ippollitts, a servant at Hitchin Hill in 1861) of Ippollitts.
Mr Taylor and Mr Walker appeared for the prosecution and Mr Ludlow for the prisoner.
Hannah Ephgrave examined: I live at the Bull public house, Gosmore. On the night
of June 15th, the prisoner was in my house. Police-
Cross-
Elizabeth Fossey (aged 63, living in Preston in 1841 -
Cross-
Police-
Cross-
Inspector Young examined: I received the prisoner into custody on the night of the 15th of June. I found a box of caps on his person and a box of caps and cartridges in his house. I told him the charge and he made no answer, but went and laid down on the bed. After that he said it was all through drink. On Sunday he asked if the man was dead. I said, “Yes, there was not much chance for him if it was one of those cartridges I found in your house”. He said it was not cartridge, but shot.
Mr R. R. Shillitoe, surgeon, examined: I went to the Bull public house between 9 and 10 o’clock on the night of the 15th of June to see the deceased. He had been dead about half an hour, the cause of death being a gunshot wound in his chest. The gun must have been within a yard or a yard and a half of the deceased as the clothes were burnt.
Cross examined: The charges entered between the third and fourth ribs and made its exit behind the shoulder.
By the JUDGE: I found no shot in the body. It had passed through.
Mr Ludlow addressed the jury in a very able address, urging that the whole transaction
was the affair of a moment, that the prisoner was in a state of great excitement
from the drink and that the shooting occurred almost at the instant when the constable
seized the prisoner. It was improbable that the prisoner, who was used to firearms,
would ram down a gun at full cock and if the gun went off while it was not at full
cock, it could scarcely be said that the prisoner was accountable. It appeared from
the policeman’s description of the position of the gun when he seized the prisoner,
that it was not sufficiently raised to inflict the wound described by Mr Shillitoe.
The probability was that when the constable touched the gun, he raised it so as to
give it a direction which would have caused the deceased to be struck; and that it
was also probable that the gun being at half-
Mr Justice BLACKBURN said that there could be no doubt that if the prisoner under the excitement of drink or drink and anger discharged the gun at the deceased, he was guilty of manslaughter. If the policeman had a reasonable belief that the prisoner intended to harm someone, it was his duty to endeavour to disarm him and if the gun went off in the struggle through the prisoner’s fault, though not by his voluntary act, he was guilty of manslaughter, though of a less aggravated form. On the other hand, if the jury were of the opinion that the gun went off by accident and not by the prisoner’s fault, then he was not guilty.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty.
Mr Justice BLACKBURN: Do you think the gun was discharged by the prisoner’s own act or that it merely went off in the struggle?
A juror: By his own voluntary act.
The JUDGE: That is my impression. (To the prisoner): Had you been under no excitement by drink, the crime would have that been of murder. As it is, the case is one of very aggravated manslaughter; and taking into account the dangerous nature of the weapon used, I cannot pass on you a less sentence than ten years penal servitude. (July 1867)
These articles reproduced by kind permission of the Hertfordshire Mercury.