On the morning she departed from the Windsor Castle, Jane Bolland declared that she found her apparel in disarray and the bone of her stays broken. A few hours earlier, she recounted, she had regained consciousness in her bedchamber after a night of illness and insensibility; George Cant, the publican who employed her, was then standing at the door. She cried out to him that he must not enter. He replied that she was intoxicated and should never set foot behind the bar again. Bolland went downstairs to speak with Mrs. Cant, then withdrew to her brother’s lodging. A month later, her word and that of a young shoemaker, Joseph Edwards, would be pitted against each other before a jury.
Camden Pelham’s account places the trial at the Central Criminal Court on Thursday, 31 October 1839. Cant, aged forty, kept the Windsor Castle, a public-house in Holborn. Bolland, who had formerly resided with her brother in Solomon-terrace, had entered service as a barmaid on 30 September; she slept in the garret, whilst Cant and his wife occupied the room beneath. These domestic arrangements bore weight for the prosecution, as they placed the servant within the immediate dwelling of those who directed her labour, though Pelham’s narrative provides no direct eyewitness observation of the alleged offence.
According to Bolland’s deposition, the first intimation of danger occurred on the morning of Thursday, 3 October. Cant had called her into a room, placed his hand upon her bosom, and asked her to kiss him. She threatened to inform his wife. He thereupon advised her to leave her bedchamber door unfastened, so that he might enter when he came to call her in the morning. Bolland refused and left the room. During the day, she disclosed the occurrence to her brother and to Mr. Balfour, an assistant to a wine merchant. The latter advised her not to quit her place, expressing his belief that Cant would not venture to repeat his conduct.
Bolland stated that she fell ill that evening and was conducted to her room towards eight o’clock; she could not recall who had assisted her up the stairs. She affirmed she was insensible by the time she reached her bed. During the night, she continued, she revived at intervals, perceived Cant beside the bed, and then lost consciousness once more during a struggle. Upon waking, near six o’clock, she perceived her garments disordered and her stay-bone broken. Her deposition represented the outrage as having occurred when she could neither consent nor resist. She made no claim that any witness had seen Cant commit the act.
The complaint she subsequently lodged is no less essential to understanding the sequel. She stated that she found Cant at the door, addressed him with reproaches, and went downstairs to inform Mrs. Cant of her husband’s actions. According to her, the mistress refused to listen and denounced her as a drunken creature; Bolland thereupon quitted the house and sought refuge with her brother. On Saturday, a surgeon examined her. Pelham states that both the medical practitioner and Bolland’s sister-in-law corroborated that an assault had been committed upon her person; their testimony, as abridged in the chronicle, did not identify the assailant.
The question of drunkenness soon ran through the body of evidence. Bolland denied having taken any liquor that day beyond a single glass of half-and-half; she described herself as subject to fainting fits and giddiness. Jane Hollier, who had assisted her upstairs, believed her to be intoxicated. Thomas Shipton, a potboy at the tavern, likewise considered that she bore the appearance of one who had been drinking. Hollier described a visit to the chamber near midnight, accompanied by Edwards, where Bolland lay asleep fully dressed. She stated she had requested Edwards to accompany her upstairs as she had but one candle; after a few minutes, she handed him the light and saw him return towards his own room. Sarah Goodchild, a washerwoman employed by Cant, related another visit around nine o’clock, in the presence of the publican and his wife, when Bolland was lying across the bed. Goodchild stated that no light was left in the room. The two depositions do not coalesce into a single, seamless narrative.
Cant was taken into custody by Constable Wells; Pelham notes that the prisoner acknowledged only having kissed the young woman. Counsel for the defence, Mr. Phillips, did not endeavour to deny that an outrage had been perpetrated upon Bolland. He contended that the sole issue was the identity of the person who had committed it. In his submission, Edwards, and not Cant, was the man to answer for it. He represented the youth as an unmarried man who had hesitated long before speaking out, but who had ultimately repaired to Cant’s solicitor following the prisoner’s committal and subsequent admission to bail. Phillips did not seek to excuse the improper liberties to which Cant had confessed; he suggested they might well have induced Bolland to believe that the publican was likewise the author of the nocturnal assault.
Hollier confirmed that Edwards stood near the door during her midnight visit. Cant’s attorney, Williams, stated that he received the young man’s communication only after Cant had been enlarged upon bail. Shipton and Goodchild deposed as to Bolland’s condition and the visits to her room. Edwards, an unemployed shoemaker at the time of the occurrence, swore that he had held carnal connection with her with her own consent; he stated that he had subsequently revealed his conduct to Williams, and thereafter to a friend named Murphy. Yet the printed account places his entry into the chamber “about eleven o’clock” on the night of 23 October, whereas Bolland’s original deposition assigned the events to the evening of 3 October. The prosecution’s reply likewise referred to Cant’s improper advances as having occurred on the morning of 23 October. The compilation does not resolve this chronological discrepancy; whether it arose from a typographical error or referred to two distinct episodes cannot now be determined.
For the Crown, Mr. Adolphus urged the jury to weigh Cant’s conduct, the admissions he had himself made, and the belated story put forward by Edwards. The latter, he observed, had remained silent at the police station while Bolland was being examined in his presence; his confession was therefore entirely destitute of the corroboration claimed by Phillips. The defence, conversely, rested its alternative theory upon Edwards’s presence in the house, the visits to the bedchamber, and his own sworn avowal. None of these accounts can be reduced to direct proof of the deed imputed to Cant. The compiler records a contested proceeding, not an exhaustive transcript of every question and answer.
The presiding judge, Mr. Baron Gurney, instructed the jury that the felony might, under the law as he laid it down, be committed upon an insensible person, even in the absence of physical resistance. He left the decision entirely to their hands. After deliberating for approximately two hours, the jury returned a verdict of guilty. The prisoner loudly protested his innocence; the court recorded sentence of death against him. The verdict legally disposed of the indictment, yet it did not extinguish the profound contradictions between the depositions assembled by Pelham.
The remainder of the narrative demonstrates that the judgment provoked a strong public reaction. Pelham records a widespread conviction that the verdict had resulted from an erroneous view of the facts, prompting many individuals to address representations to the Secretary of State without delay. The Crown declined to substitute its own finding for that of the jury; it decided, nevertheless, to commute the capital sentence to transportation for life. Cant was subsequently sent beyond the seas. The chronicle records neither a rehearing nor a formal review of the verdict: it thus draws a sharp distinction between the judicial finding of guilt and the executive clemency that mitigated the penalty.
Herein lie both the limitation and the singular interest of this retrospective chronicle. It preserves conflicting voices, an unresolved discrepancy of dates, and the trace of a public controversy following upon the sentence; it does not permit the modern reader to transmute these fragments into an independent certainty regarding what transpired within that chamber. Cant’s guilt was the verdict of the jury; his transportation, the measure of the Crown. Between the two stands an unresolved case wherein the complainant’s deposition, Edwards’s belated confession, and the testimonies of the tavern household can never be perfectly reconciled.