Report of Giles Rooke on 1 individual petition (Thomas Kinaston) and 3 collective...

Report of Giles Rooke on 1 individual petition (Thomas Kinaston) and 3 collective petitions (18 people, including the mayor and clergy; 17 people, including colonels and reverends of Warrington and Manchester and 201 people of Warrington; Lancashire) on behalf of Thomas Carter, cotton spinner, convicted at the Lancashire Assizes, held in March 1803, for inciting the theft/receiving goods and disposing of 13 bags of cotton, property of William Calton Rutson, employee of Hardcastle and Raynor, knowing them to be stolen, on 28 September [1801]. Evidences supplied by Henry Williams, carter; William Calton Rutson, employee of Hardcastle and Raynor; Thomas Powell, formerly a carter, now a prisoner; Thomas Cooper, publican; Michael Brown, publican; Peter Pinkethman, assistant to Mr Wigan; Thomas Shaw, constable and William Hulme, cotton manufacturer. There is a covering letter to a petition, listing names of those signing the petition; and character reports from Thomas Higgin, Gaoler at Lancaster Gaol and Joseph Rowley, Chaplain at Lancaster Gaol. Grounds for clemency: the prisoner had lived in Warrington for 20 years, had the character of an honest and industrious tradesman, he had served as a volunteer in the late war, had a wife and 3 young children, this was his first offence, duped into the crime, as soon as a charge was brought against him he gave himself up to a magistrate, he had been impeached by others implicated in the felony but had bought the cotton goods legitimately having an invoice and receipt (the man he bought it from has absconded), behaved well in gaol. Initial sentence: 3 years imprisonment. Recommendation: no mercy as the prisoner was 'a very bad Man'. Folios 161-174.