Next up, in our trawl through the court archives of the Old Bailey: young Maria Gurdham, aged 18, who was punished on this day in 1799.

She’d been taken on 1 March in as a servant by John Allingham, landlord of the “Greendragon”, a pub in Hart Street (known these days as Bloomsbury Way). She came with character references “from Princes-street, Westminster.” Yet on the 18th, her new employer noticed that various items were missing from his bedroom.

“We accused her of it”, the landlord explained, but she denied it. Yet her guilt was in little doubt: the items had subsequently been recovered from the local pawnbroker, Samuel Morritt of nearby Long Acre, who swore that he had received them from young Maria.

Up to that point, of course, she must have hoped to get away with her crime. But I’m imagining the conversation playing out:

Allingham: So you still proclaim your innocence?

Maria: Of course, sir.

Allingham: Then how do my possessions come to be at Mr Morritt’s pawn shop?

Maria: I have no idea, sir. You’d have to ask him that.

Allignham: But I did. And he assures me that it was you who sold him the items in question.

Maria: Please sir. I can explain. Have mercy on me. Please don’t send me before the court.

But before the court she was taken, where she was:

indicted for feloniously stealing, two shirts, value 8s. a linen sheet, value 3s. a pair of nankeen breeches, value 3s. a dimity waistcoat, value 2s. a pair of cotton stockings, value 12d.

She was tried before the second Middlesex jury, whose names are recorded for posterity: Thomas Hill, James Ward, Joseph Welch, Matthew Long, Henry Young, Thomas Brown, William Nash, John Morgan, Joseph Leach, James Watts, Hezekiah Denby and Robert Thompson.

They found her guilty, of course, and Lord Kenyon passed sentence:

The prosecutor having consented to take her into his service again, the Court ordered her to be privately whipped , and discharged.

“Having consented to take her into his service again?”!! Do I sense that, despite her criminal ways, Mr. Allingham might have had something of a soft spot for young Maria? If so, might he have stood outside, waiting while she was whipped, before taking the sobbing, remorseful girl back to the Green Dragon to comfort her?

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