Sailors Return, Temple, Bristol

Robert Jones, 23, was indicted for feloniously ravishing Augusta Cook at Bristol. The prosecutrix kept a beerhouse, called the “Sailors’ Return” in Temple Street, Bristol; and about eleven o’clock on Sunday evening, the 2nd Sept, she was fastening up her house, for which purpose she went to lock a door in a side passage. Here she saw the prisoner, who she stated, struck her in the stomach, knocked her down, and, although she struggled and called for help, effected his purpose. Mr Cooke, for the prisoner, cross-examined the prosecutrix, with a view to show that the house was a common brothel, and that the prisoner cohabited with a prostitute who lived there; these facts were in a great measure admitted. The prisoner was found guilty of a common assault, and sentenced to two years hard labour at Bristol.

ATTEMPT TO MURDER – James Treble, 38, was charged with cutting and wounding his wife, Ann Treble, on the 30th of August, in the parish of Temple, Bristol.

The prisoner, it appeared, had been separated from his wife, and five children for four or five years and was in the habit of annoying and insulting her in the street whenever he met her. On the day laid in the indictment, however, he went to the house in which she lived, a public house called the “Sailor’s Return,” and said he wanted to speak to her alone.  She, however, refused his request and he used some endearing expressions to persuade her to make up their differences and come and live with him again. His wife, remembering his former ill-treatment of her and her children, and believing that he had no affection for her, refused; when he sudden put his arm round her neck, having just previously asked her to kiss him, and drawing a pocketknife across her throat attempted to cut it. A witness named Bond, seeing the action, laid hold of the prisoner, and his wife, putting up her hand, saved her throat, but her fingers were cut to the bone. The prisoner then left the house, and few minutes after was seen to throw a pocketknife from Bristol ridge into the river. On his apprehension the prisoner declared that, though he had not killed his wife at that time, yet he would do for her at some future time.

The witness Bond, who saw the attempt, said the prisoner was very fond of his wife, but that she had dared him to touch her, and called him a wretch, and rejected his endearments. The prisoner, during the proceedings, declared that his wife was as good a woman as ever lived until she took up with bad women. He loved her as his life, but she was unfaithful to him; he had caught her in the act. He had never meant to hurt her, but she had driven him almost distracted two or three times by her bad conduct.

The learned Judge, in summing up, said the jury ought to take the feelings of the prisoner and the conduct of his wife into consideration.

The jury returned a verdict of guilty of a common assault, and he was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment.