Some interesting finds.

It is amazing what things turn up in the most unexpected places.

I was looking through the local newspaper the other week, hoping to find some information on a family I was researching. I did find what I was looking for, but the other pieces of information on the same page just prove how important such sources are.

1882

John Ellis Brown, 23 a Blacksmith, pleaded guilty of stealing two fowls, value 3/- (15p), the property of Paul Bollingbroke Johnson, at Carleton Rode, on the 31st of January..... sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment with hard labour.

John Howlett was idicted for the manslaughter of Nathan Kemp at Swaffham on the 1st of July.

On the night in question, which was a fine, moonlit night, the prisoner, accompanied by his brother and a woman named Lavender, was driving from Swaffham to Cley. It seems, from the article that Mr Howlett was supposed to have been driving furiously and on the wrong side of the road, coming into collision with the cart of the deceased. Mr Kemp was thrown out of his cart and sustained a fracture of the skull.

Kemp's cart was found laying three feet from the bank on the right side of the road. The road was 17 1/2 feet wide. Howlett's cart was very close to the bank on the right side of the road and Kemp was found laying on the bank. It was stated that the prisoner and his brother had called out to Kemp, when he was approaching to get out of the way, other witnesses said that Kemp was driving furiously and had been drinking at a public house in the neighbourhood.

The prisoner was found not guilty and discharged.

Sarah Howell was found guilty of stealing £54 from under the bed of her sick sister at Great Yarmouth, was sentenced to six months hard labour.

It all seems a little unfair when John Ellis Brown got fifteen months for stealing two chickens worth 3/- yet Sarah Howlett stole £54, a fortune in 1882, from her sick sister but only got six months!

Glynn