EXTRAORDINARY CASE.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1104, 23 June 1882, Page 2

EXTRAORDINARY CASE.

♦ A most extraordinary trial was. decided recently in the Queen's Bench Division, before Mr Justioe Denman and a common jury. It appeared that a young man named Devenish, twenty years of age, -who was the plaintiff was apprenticed to a plumber named Tubb, at Aldershot In May last, the eldest daughter of Tubb, a yonng lady turning sixteen years of age, found the plaintiff in his shirt under her bed, were young children were sleeping, and to which she was about to retire j she in going upstairs saw the light in her room put out, and heard someone move. She thereupon called her father, and said that someone was under the bed. On her father going upstairs he found it was his apprentice, John Denvenish. He dragged John out and dragged him to his own room, and laid him on his own bed and then sent for Dr Maunders, a member ol the Koyal College of Surgeons, who came immediately he was called, and found John Devenish insensible. The doctor asked for a horsewhip, and finding that Tubb had not that instrument of torture, he ordered a poker to be made red hot, and then to put tho offending John to the test, to see whether he was shamming or not, he touched him up with tho red hot poker eleven times on various parts of the body. The plaintiff was then made to dress, and turned out of doors in company with a policemen, who hearing

what Tubb had to say, refused to take the plaintiff in charge, but protected him till morning, when he went Lome to his parents. The medical men who attended him bore testimony to the fact that when he came home he had eleven burns on his body, and the jury saw the eleven scars. The plaintiff's j story was that he had a book which he wanted to read in bed, but when he #>t into his bed his light went out ; seeing another room with a light in it, he went into it to get one. As he did ao, he heard some one coming upstairs, and thinking it was' Mrs Tub, he being in his night shirt, blev out the light and got under the bed, intending to come out again as soon as she had passed. Instead of it being Mrs Tubb, it turned out to be Miss Tubb, the iair damsel of sixteen, who screamed for her father, and then occurred what is above stated. The defence set up in justification was that the plaintiff -went in under the bed for an immoral purpose. The doctor admit- - ted touching the plaintiff up with the , , poker which was not very hot as he could l»ear his finger against it, and that he oaly ga^e him just one touchl The jury, however, in the face of the evidence, declined to believe the doctor, and gave damage against the defendant for £85, and against Tubb for £25, for breach of the articles of indenture, The Judge gave costs against the doctor, but not against Tubb. The jury added they did not believe that the plaintiff went under the bed for an immoral purpose.