Whitehaven Gazette Oct. 18, 1819 Afronts Offered By Felons to Judges

Afronts Offered By Felons to Judges

Whitehaven Gazette - Oct. 18, 1819

AFFRONTS OFFERED BY FELONS TO JUDGES.        A letter appears in the Salisbury Journal on the subject of two gross insults stated in our last to have been offered by felons to the Recorder at the late Old Bailey Sessions:        "I noticed a paragraph in the papers of this week which gave me no small concern. A felon at the Session of the Old Bailey, after conviction threw a stone at his Judge as he sat on the Bench, who remanded him, took it as if a personal affront only to himself, and forgave him.        It has been asked. "Should he not have viewed it as the highest affront to the laws of the Country?" The greatest of crimes! as he was then the representative of the majesty of the laws, which high offense should, in all cases,  receive the most condign punishment. If affronts of this sort be passed over with impunity, contempt of Justice follows, and the supreme dignity of the law is destroyed.        Another felon was lately convicted and sentenced to transportation for life, whereon he petitioned for a favour from his Judge, and his request was that the Judge would extend it a year longer.        At the summer assizes held in Salisbury in the 7th of Charles I. Sir Thomas RICHARDSON, chief justice, presiding at the Crown Bar, and having passed sentence on a felon, he threw a brick bat at the head of the Judge, whereon the Judge remanded him, and had him immediately indicted for it, and being convicted, had his right hand ( with which this high offence was committed) cut off, and nailed to the gibbet; and the felon was himself hanged thereon in the presence of the Court. The gallows were erected before the doors of the Court, in the Market-place, and all business was suspended till the execution had taken place. Vide DYER's Reports. ******

 

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