In March, 1844, a navigator named James Warren was sentenced to fifteen years transportation for highway robbery. He and another, allegedly, had, in the early hours of 13th August 1843, and where the New North Road meets the Cowley Bridge Road, knocked a shoemaker over the head and rifled his pockets. A young woman, Eliza Coleman, she was twenty-two, gave evidence on his behalf at his trial in an attempt to save him. Her evidence was clearly mendacious. Five months after her court appearance she was brought before the City Assize Court at Exeter Castle charged with perjury as reported below in Trewman's Exeter Flying Post of 1st. August 1844.
"Mr. Cornish appeared for the prosecution; called Mr. Henry W. Hooper, who states in substance that he was present at the Assizes for the city of Exeter on 25th of March last. when a man of the name of James Warren was tried before Mr. Justice Cresswell, and convicted of highway robbery on the Cowley Bridge road.
"The prisoner Eliza Coleman was a witness on that occasion, and swore that she remembered Saturday the 12th August preceding. That she and the prisoner James Warren cohabited together and occupied a room in Sherman's Court, West-street. That they retired to bed between 10 and 11 o'clock that night; that she did not awake until the morning about 5 o' clock. That Warren, the prisoner, was then in bed with her, and she had not missed him during the night. That she did not hear any one call the prisoner that night; and that he did not go out after breakfast on Sunday morning. And being asked what time that was , and cautioned by Mr. Justice Cresswell, she replied, about prayer time. She knew a man called Thomas Mare, sometimes called Curly or Culy Tom, and remembered seeing him early on the Saturday evening, but did not see him afterwards that night. She swore most positively, and after repeated caution, that he did not come to Sherman's Court, nor did any one call the prisoner Warren during the night.
Now in contradiction to all this, on the preliminary examination before the Magistrates at Guildhall, at the time James Warren was committed for trial, she swore that Warren was called up between 3 and 4 o'clock on the Sunday morning by anither navigator named Thomas Mare otherwise Curly, to go, as she was informed, to Bramford Speke; and that Warren returned and went to bed again about half-past 5 o'clock......
.....The Judge summed up, and the Jury immediately found her guilty.
The learned Judge now proceeded to address the prisoner. She had, he said, been guilty of a most serious offense, and this too under circumstances of great deliberation. She had been cautioned, warned, had time for retraction, yet still she persisted in what was now most clearly shown was the grossest falsehood. This crime was among the worst and most mischievous that could be committed. It struck at the very root of all proceedings in Courts of Justice, and he had alsways felt that if a clear case were made out, the provisions of the statute should be carried into effect. This then had been a very proper prosecution, for, for her there was no palliation, no excuse whatsoever, since having first told the truth, she left that path in order to entangle herself in all the labyrinth of deliberate falsehood; the consequence of which she would now have to bear. In the hope then that the example thus made in her case would operate so as to deter others from the commission of this very serious offence, though probably on herself all tht was to be desired might not be wrought by it; and also as a sentence far better for her than she might at that time be inclined to suppose, since a separation from those who had been her companions in sin and iniquity must be the consequence, he sentenced her to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for the space of two calendar months , and at the expiration of that time to be transported for seven years.
This sentence handed out by Mr. Justice Patteson seems, to me, to be out of all proportion to the offence. Is it not a pitiful business, this over-sentencing to 'make an example'? Not only is it cruel but I doubt that it ever achieves its purpose. We are seeing a spate of it under Keir Starmer. I suspect Eliza Coleman was in love with James Warren and that is what accounts for the irrationality of her evidence. It is clear from her words and actions that she was a simple soul.
Eliza said that James left her at prayer time. The court would appear to have understood what she meant!
The omission above is a list of witnesses to Eliza's appearance at the Magistrates' Court.
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