Mary Morgan

343

Maureen Withey on 17th February 2024

MONMOUTH,ASSIZES, August 23, Richard Williams, a Man dressed in a round frock, aged 30, and Mary Morgan, alias Cardiff Mary, a woman of very ill-favoured and masculine appearance, aged 26 years,, stood indicted for the murder of William Evans. They pleaded Not Guilty. The Prisoners were much agitated during the reading of the indictment; the female wept excessively. Mr. Russell stated the case to the Jury. The female prisoner, he said, was a girl of' the town. He did not mention this for the purpose of exciting a prejudice against her; but as he knew it must come out in evidence, he had thought it best to state the fact at once. It would be found that on the night of the 26th of April, the deceased Wm. Evans, who was upon very intimate terms with the prisoner Williams, had been drinking with him till they were nearly inebriated. They had been good friends up to that time and there was no sort of enmity subsisting between them. A bout the hour of eleven that night. Williams and the deceased had some conversation, as they were going alone' a street in Newport, about accompanying some girls and they fell in with a woman named Nixon, and the female prisoner Morgan, otherwise Cardiff Mary, at a place called Kinson. Nixon, who was also a woman of the town, and Morgan, lodged at a. house kept by a man and woman named Thomas. The prisoners and Nixon and Evans walked together, till they came near to the Red Cow public-house, near which place, on the banks of the Newport Canal, is a timber wharf; in which was a saw-pit.- A man with a white round frock was seen about this place, but of him no trace had been discovered. Nixon and the deceased walked together, and the two prisoners were at a short distance behind the former; Nixon and the deceased turned out of the road into the timber-yard, and went into the saw-pit; and in a very few minutes after their entrance, a large slab of timber above 300 pounds weight, which was reared up by the side of the pit, was was thrown upon them, and the deceased was killed in an instant: Nixon, his companion, was seriously injured,. and it could only excite surprise that - she was not destroyed also; the slab of timber was originally, the butt of a tree, and it would be satisfactorily proved that it was impossible it could have fallen into the sawpit by accident. He should also prove, that the female prisoner had been for some time on very bad terms with Nixon; that she had used violent threats against her, because she had given information against her before the Mayor for keeping a disorderly house. When the screams of Nixon were heard, the female prisoner went to the side of the saw-pit, and said, curse her, why don't she come out? and when Nixon asked for assistance and for a light, she went away, and paid no attention to her request, and returned to her lodging at Thomas's, and smoked her pipe as if nothing had occurred. he should show, that a girl named Phillips asked the female prisoner why she did not assist Nixon, and her reply was Do you mean to take her part? If you do, you shall be served the same. She also said it was not intended to kill the man but only the girl. The prisoner Williams went to the pit and helped Nixon out by raising the slab of timber, and it was almost, if not quite, impossible that he could have avoided seeing the deceased when he was lifting Nixon out. Williams, however, on that occasion appeared not to know that the deceased was in the pit, for on the man in the smock frock asking him what was become of the woman who was with Morgan, his reply was that he supposed she was gone. Eliza Nixon proved facts as stated. The Jury consulted for about 20 minutes, and found Mary Morgan, Guilty of Manslaughter, and Rd. Williams, Not Guilty.—Mary Morgan was sentenced to be transported for 14 years. Baldwin’s London Weekly Journal, 28 Aug 1824.