| MIDDLESEX SESSIONS, MAY 15 |
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The May Sessions for criminal business were concluded to-day at the
Guildhall, Wesminster, before Mr. P. H. Edlin, Q.C., Assistant-Judge; Captain Morley, Sir John Heron Maxwell,
Mr. J. H. Deakin, jun., Mr. Antrobus, Mr. J. D. Fletcher, Captain Bedford Pim, R.N., M.P., Sir Alexander
Armstrong, Mr. Aspinall, and the Hon. A. J. G. Ponson, Justices.
Joseph Ahern, 23, John Howley, 23, and Thomas Hartnet, 20, were charged with having maliciously wounded
and assaulted Henry Skeats, a metropolitan police-constable, while in the execution of his duty. Mr. Montague
Williams prosecuted on behalf of the Treasury; Ahern was defended by Mr. Geohegan, Howley by Mr. Gill, and
Hartnet by Mr. Tickell. On the night of the 14th ult. Police- constable Skeats, while on duty near Oakum-street,
Chelsea, a locality favored by rough characters, noticed a fight going on between some lads, and he, after
interfering with and pacifying the combatants, was proceeding on his beat when Hartnet came up, and while
addressing him in threatening and abusive language kicked him on the shin. Seizing him at once Skeats tried
to take him to the police-station. He managed, however, to slip from his grasp, and ran away pursued by Skeats,
who never lost sight of the fugitive until he had overtaken and captured him. Then followed that part of the
assault, when the constable suffered the most injuries. Ahern, approaching him, said, "Let him go, and I will
see him home." The request was not complied with. Directly afterwards a stone was thrown by some person
in a crowd of about 20 roughs whom the constable did not recognize, but whom two women, the mother-in-law
and sister-in-law of Howley, identified as being that man. The force of the blow, which struck him on the head,
knocked him to the ground. While lying there he was kicked by Ahern in the face and rendered senseless,
thus affording Hartnet an opportunity of escaping, of which he took advantage.
The jury found Ahern and Howley guilty of unlawfully wounding, and all three Guilty of assaults
upon the constable while in the execution of his duty. It was then proved that Ahern had in the year 1875
undergone one month's imprisonment for assaulting the police, and rescuing Howley from their custody, and
that since then he had been in trouble on the more serious charge of felony. Howley, in the year 1872, had
been four times summarily convicted, two of those convictions being for assaults on the police. In 1873 he
went to sea and did not return home until 1875. Since then he had been four times convicted of assaults,
one of the sentences passed upon him at these Sessions being one year's imprisonment, with hard labour,
for inflicting grievous bodily harm on a police-constable. The Assistant-Judge said that the assaults were
deliberate and violent assaults upon a police-constable when he was acting in the execution of his duty, and
the motive of them could only have been a desire—a wanton and mischievous desire—to interfere
with the police and make them the target for blows and kicks, utterly reckless of the nature of the injuries that
might be thus inflicted. In this case brutality and determined lawlessness were combined. The Assistant-Judge
then sentenced Howley to two years', Ahern to 12 months', and Hartnet to four months' imprisonment, with
hard labour. |
| — The Times 16 May 1878 |
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