332 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1810. 



ror, on seeing the stranger who 

 had insulted her, that siie swoon- 

 ed, and fell off the sofa on which 

 she lay ; on recovering, she found 

 his silk handkerchief tied over her 

 mouth, and that she had suffered 

 the injury of which she afterwards 

 gave a most particular detail. The 

 ravisher then took off the hand- 

 kerchief, and importuned her to 

 fly with him, offering her the com- 

 mand of money and servants: and 

 telling her he had taken off the 

 handkerchief in hope of a comply- 

 ing answer. She screamed, and 

 threatened him with her brother's 

 return. He seized her again, 

 bound her own handkerchief on 

 her mouth, and escaped. In at- 

 tempting to stand up, she fell and 

 fainted ; but on her recovery, still 

 lying on the floor, and bound, she 

 tore off the bandage by rubbing 

 her head against the window-seat, 

 and called for assistance. It was 

 by this feeble tissue of improba- 

 bilities that the guilt of the de- 

 fendantvvas to be covered from the 

 eyes of a jury. A stranger walks 

 through an inhabited house, a 

 house full of servants and lodgers 

 —walks, as by intuition, directly 

 to Miss Latham's apartment ; and 

 there commits a crime which ex- 

 poses him to instant seizure and 

 instant ruin. She swooned on see- 

 ing him, but no violence was used 

 in her swoon. The jury had heard 

 the accurate observations which 

 she made in the course of the as- 

 sault. Whocouldconceiveawoman 

 so circumstanced to be capable of 

 such observation — to be collected, 

 calm, particular — to remember 

 incidents which might escape the 

 mind most at ease ? She could re- 

 collect the change of the stranger's 

 handkerchief for her own, the pro- 

 position of going off with him, her 



reply, and his rejoinder. She 

 could remember the hurry of the 

 ravisher, on being threatened with 

 her brother's return from the 

 shore, the improbable spirit of de- 

 corum which worked upon his po-, 

 liteness, to comeback and raisetiie 

 two chairs that he had overturned 

 in his retreat. She could then de- 

 vise a lucky expedient for freeing 

 herself from her bonds, calmly call 

 for Martha Lawrence, the servant, 

 to complete the operation, and set 

 her free. He, in his office as 

 counsel for the prosecutor, had 

 no wish to load her with an un- 

 qualified charge ; he concluded 

 that she had been made the tool 

 of other and more artful persons. 

 The case was accompanied by cir- 

 cumstances, which, if the)' were 

 correctly stated, must make its 

 truth undeniable. Were they 

 stated to the magistrate ? If so, 

 they were still forthcoming in his 

 notes. The transaction occupied 

 the 10th, 11th, and 12th of July. 

 Witnesses were now waiting to 

 prove, that his client was not in 

 Worthing on any of those days. 

 The house in which the outrage 

 was committed, was, like those 

 hastily built at watering-places, 

 small, but with few apartments, 

 and thin partitions, through which 

 a scream, nay even a word, must 

 be audible. Miss Latham screamed 

 loudly! — "Gentlemen (said the 

 learned serjeant) it has pleased 

 Providence to make the scream of 

 distress the most heart-rending, 

 most piercing, most penetrating, 

 of all other sounds that can be 

 formed by the human voice." If 

 Miss Latham was violated on the 

 I2ti), why did she not communi- 

 cate her misfortune to some 

 friend — not of course to a male 

 acquaintance, for there might 



