Old Bailey Proceedings:
Old Bailey Proceedings: Accounts of Criminal Trials

6th September 1769

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Currently Held: Harvard University Library

LL ref: t17690906-80




514, 515. (M.) Abraham Barnet proceedingsdefend and Michael Hymes proceedingsdefend were indicted for stealing a bar of hard soap, value 12 d. and five yards of oil cloth, value 2 s. the property of John Osborn proceedingsvictim , August 15 . *

John Osborn < no role > . I live at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. I drive the Aylesbury waggon. On the 15th of August the things mentioned in the indictment were packed up in a flat, and put in the middle of the waggon. I was with the waggon. The prisoners being on the road, desired to ride. I took them up. When they rode about three quarters of a mile, then one of them complained he was sick; I stopt, and they got out. They went into a public-house at Kensington to drink, and I went in with them; then they said their minds were altered, and they would go no farther. Then I said, Give me what you have in your pocket to carry, and walk a little way, and you will be better. Then Barnet pulled out a bag, and Hyems pulled out a paper parcel, and delivered it to me. In the paper was this bar of soap. (Produced in Court.) It was directed to Richard Watford < no role > at Aylesbury, which I had to carry. At first they told me they were smugglers, and had run goods. When I asked him what business he had to take it out of the waggon, he said he found it on the road. The oil cloth was found in the room where we were drinking, in the chimney place, the Saturday following.

The prisoners; in their defence said, they found the soap on Holborn Hill, and Barnet said he picked it up.

Barnet called Benjamin Mordecai < no role > , and Hymes Moses Levi < no role > , Lazarus Levi < no role > , and Samuel Arine < no role > , who said the prisoners were Jews, and had good characters.

Both guilty . T .




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