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From: "Mary Heaphy" <>
Subject: [IRL-TIP] (no subject)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 18:13:35 -0000


>From the Times 4-4-1826

Clonmel assizes.

Maurice Crowe was put to the bar, charged with uttering base coin on the 7th
of Feb. last, at Thurles. This was rather a curious case; James Caesar
deposed, that he went on the 7th Feb. last to the fair in Thurles, for the
purpose of selling a cow; the prisoner was the purchaser, and tendered in
payment six sovereigns and some change, and observed that he had received
them in payment the day before for pigs. Witness objected to some sovereigns
that the prisoner took out of a bag, on which he took more out of another
bag and offered them to witness. The witness having occasion to pass the
sovereigns shortly after, ascertained that they were base. The prisoner on
being brought before Captain Wilson (Chief Magistrate) was searched, and
other sovereigns found on his person, on that occasion he said he had got
them in England.

Mr. George Harkness, assay-master to the Bank of Ireland, was called upon,
and having examined the coins found on the prisoner, as well as those he had
passed over to the first witness (Caesar), pronounced them base. On being
questioned he said that the coins purporting to be sovereigns were in fact
British farthings.

The Lord Chief Justice expressed his opinion that the prosecution should
drop, inasmuch as the coins in question, which had been laid in the
indictment as counterfeit, was not really so, but the representation of
British farthings. The court and several gentlemen of the bar seemed to
think the case a novel one.

Mr. Harkness was further examined by the Court-The reverse on the
sovereigns, he explained, (which was previously done by the learned Judge),
was St. George and the dragon, that on the British Farthing, the figure of
Britannia, consequently there was a dissimilarity between the money found on
the prisoner (which the indictment described as counterfeit coins, but which
in reality was no more than a farthing) and the genuine sovereigns. Counsel
for the crown read extracts from acts of Parliament in support of the
prosecution, which were, however, overruled by the Court, as not being
analogous to the case under consideration.

The learned Judge, in conclusion, expressed his intention (should there be a
conviction) of suspending judgement, in order that his Lordship might have
an opportunity of submitting the question to the consideration of the 12
Judges. He then briefly charged the jury, who brought in a verdict of
guilty.



Mary

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