220. JAMES NEAGLE proceedingsdefend was indicted for feloniously stealing, on the 20th of March , five pounds weight of pewter, value 2 s. 6 d. the property of Richard Yates proceedingsvictim and James-Edward Yates proceedingsvictim .

JAMES- EDWARD YATES < no role > sworn. - I am a pewterer ; my partner's name is Richard Yates < no role > ; the prisoner had worked for us, as a journeyman pewterer , about eight or nine years; I suspected the prisoner, and set a man to watch him.

HENRY STRINGER < no role > sworn. - I am apprentice to Mr. Yates, No. 20, Shoreditch; my master set me to watch the prisoner on Wednesday, the 20th of March; about one o'clock I saw him take a piece of metal from a hole under his work-bench in the shop, and take it towards the privy; I went and told my master.

Q. Was that hole made on purpose or by accident? - A. By accident; it is left so.

JOSEPH FRANCIS < no role > sworn. - I am journeyman to Messrs. Yates; when the prisoner was brought back, after he had been out of my master's house, I searched him, and took the pewter out of his breeches.

Q. Do you know whose metal it is? - A. I believe it is my master's.

Q.(To Stringer.) Look at that piece of metal; Is that the piece of metal you saw the prisoner take? - A. It is like the same piece of metal.

Q.(To Prosecutor.) Do you know the piece of metal? - A. I never saw it before I saw it come out of the prisoner's breeches; it is the same that we have melted, and I believe it to be the same sort that another man was casting in the same kind of a mould, and this was what remained.

Prisoner's defence. I went to the hole to put some tobacco in; the hole is open to every one; the piece of metal was given me by another man in the shop to cast, and it was not good enough, I did not cast it; I was going out to dinner; the door was locked; I waited till the door was unlocked and then went out, and my master hauled me in and insisted upon searching of me; I opened my waistcoat and my breeches; my breeches were broke, both between my legs and both my knees, and when I sat down I picked this piece of metal up; I did not have it when I went out.

Prosecutor. I took him out in the street, and saw the metal taken from his breeches after I had followed him out into the street.

GUILTY , aged 35.

Transported for seven years .

First Middlesex Jury, before Mr. Recorder.