ELIZABETH KING
Sentenced to Death at the Old Bailey, for privately stealing a Bag of Gold, 21st of September, 1811
ON the 21st of September, 1811, Elizabeth King, along with Elizabeth Blott and Philadelphia Walton, were put to the bar, charged with a robbery in a dwelling-house.
Mr Barry, for the prosecution, stated the following case to the jury. The prosecutor, Mr William Coombe, a publican, lived at the King's Head public-house, Earl Street, Blackfriars. On Saturday, the 8th of June, about eight o'clock in the evening, the three prisoners came to his house, and going into a back parlour ordered some ale, which they drank. Then one of them, Elizabeth Blott, begged to sit in the bar, as she waited to see Mr Lloyd, whom she expected. Mr Coombe accordingly permitted her, and the three prisoners went into the bar together. In a short time Blott and Walton went to look for Mr Lloyd, leaving the prisoner King in the bar, from which Mr Coombe was frequently called, so that she was several times alone there. When the other two, with Mr Lloyd, returned, they all sat down a short time together, and then all departed.
At twelve o'clock at night, when Mr Coombe was going to bed, he discovered that a canvas bag, containing a silk bag and thirty-six guineas in gold, which was in his coat pocket that hung across the back of a chair in his bar, had been carried off. Dickons, an officer of Bow Street, received information of the robbery, and through the exertions of Mr Reading, a publican, in the neighbourhood of Gray's Inn Lane, and Elizabeth Blott, one of the prisoners, the prisoner Elizabeth King was apprehended, when she immediately confessed that she only had committed the robbery. She stated that she had exchanged the guineas for bank-notes, that she spent six of them, and that she had deposited the notes, etc., in the hands of Mr Slyford, a publican in Brooke's Market.
The counsel for the prosecution stated that the bank-notes and three guineas, as mentioned, were delivered up by Mr Slyford; and he added that, in justice and humanity, the prisoners Walton and Blott should not have been included in the indictment, and if he had been consulted before the bill had been preferred he would not have permitted them to have been put upon their trial.
The facts, as stated, were proved, and Elizabeth King was found guilty and sentenced to death.