Report of B. Hopper Williamson, Recorder of Newcastle upon Tyne on 1 individual petition...

Report of B. Hopper Williamson, Recorder of Newcastle upon Tyne on 1 individual petition (prisoner) and 3 collective petitions (32 people, from Berwick on Tweed including the mayor; 3 people, bakers in Berwick on Tweed; and 13 people, from Newcastle upon Tyne: all Northumberland) on behalf of James Steel, warehouseman (previously a baker apprenticed in Berwick-upon-Tweed, convicted at the Michaelmas Newcastle Quarter Sessions in 1796, for stealing 27lbs of sugar, property of Robert Cole Rankin and John Cole Rankin, wholesale grocers and tea dealers in Newcastle, on 19 July 1796. Grounds for clemency: first offence and previous good character, willing to serve in HM. Forces, has a wife and infant child to support, the prisoner maintains the sugar was mistakenly picked up by the carrier and that he tried to retrieve it but failed (the prisoner was going to replace the missing sugar out of his own funds so that his master would not know what had happened; as other goods had gone missing before). Initial sentence: 7 years transportation. Recommendation: no mercy, 'Depredations committed by Servants or Labourers upon the Property of their Employers having of late years greatly increased'. Folios 109-117.