Mary Davies was shopping in the market
when she saw the boots stolen from the shoemaker. In her statement
to the police she said,
"I saw the prisoner walk away from the standing
with the boots under her cloak"
She
told the shoemaker who chased after the thief down the street. When he
caught her he searched her, but could not find the boots.
She denied that she had stolen anything,
but another woman at the fair saw the boots in the road nearby where she
had dropped them.
In her statement Mary Davies identified the woman
in the grey cloak as the thief.
She could not sign her statement as she could not write, but instead made
her mark, as you can see above. The
thief turned out to be Jane Lewis,
wife of John Lewis of Pantydwr just over the border in Radnorshire. She
had probably walked over the hills to market that morning.
The Justices of the Peace in the court
took a serious view of such a crime and the extract below records the
verdict in the case of Jane Lewis.
