WILLIAM HITCHIN
Transported for Seven Years for stealing an Exchequer Bill, September, 1810
AT the sessions at the Old Bailey, September, 1810, this man, an old offender, better known in London as the celebrated Bill Hitchin, was tried before a London jury, for having, in the month of July, 1806, stolen from the warehouse of Messrs Kent, London Wall, upholsterers, one Exchequer bill, of the value of one hundred pounds.
It appeared that the warehouse of the prosecutors was burglariously broken open, and plundered of various property, to the amount of several hundred pounds, at the period above mentioned, and no trace of the robbers could be obtained till two years afterwards, when the prisoner, being apprehended in the county of Warwick for an offence committed there, was being searched, and the Exchequer bill mentioned in the indictment was found upon his person. Having been convicted of the crime at that time imputed to him, and suffered imprisonment for the same, there was no opportunity of bringing him up for trial here till the period of his imprisonment in Warwick jail had expired. That having lately taken place, he was now put to the bar to answer to this charge.
The case being gone through on the part of the prosecution, Mr Alley, his counsel, submitted that it was not made out according to law against the prisoner: that the indictment having stated that the prisoner had stolen an Exchequer bill, it was incumbent on the prosecutor to prove that it was an Exchequer bill, which he failed to do. The Court, however, overruled the objection, and the prisoner was found guilty. It being a grand larceny, the prisoner had his clergy, but was sentenced to seven years' transportation.