Preston Guardian
Saturday 16 May 1846
Begging and Imposition
Late on Monday evening the 4th inst., two men, apparently in great distress, entered the shop of Mr. Alfred Jackson, grocer, St James's-street, Burnley, for the purpose of craving his assistance towards purchasing a coffin for the wife of one of the parties. She was stated to be lying dead in a house in one of the back streets of the town. Failing in their efforts with Mr. Jackson, they turned round to solicit the assistance of Mr. Carey, secretary for the police, who was in the shop at the time dressed in plain clothes. In the course of their conversation they proposed to take Mr. Carey to the place where the woman was lying, to which he at once assented. Upon getting into the street, however, they seemed less at ease than usual, and evidently wishful to dispense with his company without the useless ceremony of taking leave, but assistance being at hand they were soon safely lodged in the cells of the Court House for the evening, not much pleased with Mr. Carey's company keeping, and protesting that the woman was not lying dead in Burnley, but somewhere in Manchester. On being brought before Mr. Stansfield, the resident magistrate, they denied being married at all, and were committed as vagrants to the House of Correction for one month. The same persons during the day had solicited assistance from different parties under various pretences, and, as poor mechanics, had requested the secretary of the Mechanics' Institution to get up a subscription among the members to assist them in their present distressed circumstances.
_________________ Mel
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