POTENTIAL members of the Grand Jury had to battle against treacherous conditions of ice and snow to reach Winchester for the winter Assize of 1844 when, ironically, the list of prisoners was fairly light.

However, it did feature one case of manslaughter which involved a couple who fatally quarrelled over a half a crown, and another concerning the concealment and horrific mutilation of a newly born baby.

The former centred on Thomas Matthew Tucker who was charged with killing and slaying his partner Harriet Hill, the tragic drama in a street being witnessed by a man called Samuel Downing.

He said: “I saw a man and a woman. The latter said ‘I have got one of my own. What do I want with you?’ He then knocked her down and said 'Take that'. She fell on the pavement. He took hold of her and picked her up. He then shoved her into the horse road and said, ‘Go home’.

“She fell from the push, he tried to get her up but couldn’t. She was bleeding from the mouth and was insensible”

Further evidence was supplied by Georgina Newell, a mutual friend, who saw Hill lying on the ground, and with Downing carried her to the nearby Ship and Tiger pub in Portsmouth where they lived.

Hill died the following morning, with a surgeon confirming she had suffered a severe brain injury.

Tucker was arrested, immediately admitting he had struck her. “But she deserved it, it was all about half a crown.”

Tucker said he had given Hill money to buy supper but when he returned home, there was neither food, nor her in their room. He found her drunk in the Royal George pub and on the way home he slapped across the face.

“She fell down and sat in the road abusing me.I lifted her up, she ran away from me and then fell down as though she was in a fit.”

The jury convicted him, the judge Baron Alderson passing an extraordinary lenient sentence of three months imprisonment, with one month in solitary confinement.

In the second case, Hannah Cole was convicted ,without jurors leaving their seats, of concealing the birth of her illegitimate child at Hurstbourne Priors where she lived as a single woman with her parents.

She admitted having the child but claimed it was already dead and she had cut it up and put it away.

The judge could conceal his anger at the barbarity.

“The indictment says charges you that the child was born dead. I trust in God it was but I don’t know that. I don’t know why you cut it to pieces if it was. If it were born alive, you will have to answer it in the hereafter.”

He then consoled Cole for being abused, castigating seducers who led young women astray and said they had much to answer for.

“I wish they were here to have the punishment instead of you, but all suffering falls on the female and they go unscathed by the world, leaving the women to suffer. This is the bad side of society, one in which it is not disgraceful for a man to do the greatest wrong to a woman. There is no punishment for the man but all the misery, shame and punishment must fall on the woman.

“I wish I could alter public opinion in this respect but I cannot. I can only protest against the practice. You have been led into the commission of this dreadful crime.”

He then jailed her for six months, with four weeks to be spent in solitary confinement.