An Old Time Playful Prisoner

1916

Over a century ago there occurred in London what the Annual Register called "a most unparalleled atrocity." It was only the theft of a pocket handkerchief from a pocket, but the circumstances of the deed explain the vehemence of this denunciation. Four men were on their trial for assaulting a man in his house at Ponder's End, putting him in fear and stealing from him, and one of them relieved the tedium of the trial, which lasted eight hours, by picking the pocket of one of the turnkeys as he stood in the dock. An official had the presence of mind to order the restoration of the handkerchief, and the prisoner had enough presence of mind to obey "with the most careless indifference," but the court, we read, "were horror struck." Justice, however, pulled itself together sufficiently to sentence all four men to death.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.