MARY GREEN
Convicted of putting off Base Coin, and sentenced to Six Months' Imprisonment, 5th of April, 1811
AT the sessions for Middlesex held on the 5th of April, 1811, Mary Green, a decent-looking girl, was found guilty of putting off two bad shillings to Mr Harris, a linen-draper, in Pickett Street, Temple Bar.
She went into Mr Harris's shop and asked for small silver for a dollar. Mr Harris gave it to her. She walked two or three yards up the shop and, addressing herself to the shopman, told him that his master had given her two bad shillings. This Mr Harris denied, and refused to take them. She then conducted herself most rudely; whereupon a constable was sent for. Before he arrived she still persisted in her impudent behaviour, saying that she had no more money about her but the dollar. Lack, the officer, soon arrived, and searched her, and there was found concealed about her twelve shillings and four sixpences, all in good silver, besides the change of the dollar.
The jury, after a charge from Mr Mainwaring, found her guilty.
As soon as the verdict was pronounced, the counsel for the prosecution then acquainted the Court that, as the punishment was pointed out by Act of Parliament, from which they could not deviate, and therefore the prisoner's cause could not be affected by the profligacy of her character, he thought it right to mention that this was the second time she had been brought into that court (first with her mother) for this kind of crime; that her father was at that moment transported, and her younger sister was in confinement under the sentence of the Court for the very same kind of offence. She was sentenced to six months' imprisonment.