Letter from Richard Stroud, prisoner on board the Lion hulk, at Portsmouth to person...

Letter from Richard Stroud, prisoner on board the Lion hulk, at Portsmouth to person unknown, enclosing a petition. [wanting] The letter asks for the person to intercede with Henry Jodrill MP and Recorder of Yarmouth, as the prisoner has been confined for 2 years. The prisoner also asks for a character report to be made out by William Goodrick, Supervisor of Excises, Yarmouth, Norfolk 'under whose immediate Inspection I was.' There is a letter from William Goodrick, Supervisor of Excise, Yarmouth, to Mr John Carr, of Rotherhithe in Surrey, dated 18 Sept 1796. An outline of the case is contained in the letter: Stroud was detected conveying 6lbs of candles, value 4/-, from the workshop of a tallow chandler under his survey. Goodrick offered to put up money to bail the prisoner but this was refused, Goodrick suggests that this is because both of them were strangers to the area having both previously come from Greenwich, Kent. The prisoner was led to believe that the prosecutor would not appear against him and 'by that Means lulled into a fatal and unprepared Security'. The jury was chiefly composed of tradesmen under the survey of the excise and as such could not be expected to have any goodwill towards an officer of the excise. Goodrick suggests the prisoner 'laboured under a temporary Derangement of Mind'. The prisoner had requested that the conviction was not known to his (Greenwich) friends, but it is now of necessity to break this promise. In a footnote dated 22 Sept, Goodrick writes 'I should think Coln Goldsworthy a proper Person to lay the Matter before his Majesty' and on the prisoners condition; the 'Poor Man, He has fretted, lamented + pined till he is almost a Skeleton.' Initial sentence: 7 years transportation. Folios 73-75. See also HO 47/22/18, folios 93-96.