Report of Robert Graham on 2 reports/petitions (D Harris, of Oxford Castle) on behalf...

Report of Robert Graham on 2 reports/petitions (D Harris, of Oxford Castle) on behalf of Henry Russell, convicted (with ----- Cleaver) at the Lent [Oxfordshire Assizes], for uttering forged banknotes knowing them to be forged on 29 July 1808. Evidences supplied by Susannah Williams, publican and shopkeeper and Elizabeth Cecil, shopkeeper. There are letters from Lord Abingdon; Joseph Kaye[?] of Tokenhouse Yard, a representative of the Bank of England; D Harris and S[J] Weston. Folio 215-216 from D Harris, of Oxford Castle lists the following as reprieved: Thomas Waldron Wheeler, for horse stealing; William Wright, for felony in a dwelling house nobody being therein; George Bowerman and Samuel Franklin, for burglary. Grounds for clemency: previous good character, illiterate, was a 'minor offender', he could not read (and so was unable to tell a forged from a non-forged note), has a wife and children, ignorant of the fact that the notes were forged and the prisoner was the innocent tool of ----- Langley, a dealer in notes, there was no evidence the prisoner passed the notes knowingly. Initial sentence: death, reprieved. Recommendation: speaks against mercy. Folios 207-223.

See also HO 47/41/26 , folios 225-228.