Free Jane Austen by Valerie Grosvenor Myer Page B

that if she was sent as a convicted criminal to Botany Bay he would sell his land and houses and go with her. He was in poor health, with a foot enlarged by gout, and only able to walk with two sticks. He retained a barrister to defend her and drummed up witnesses prepared to swear that she was in no way unstable or dishonest. He moved to Ilchester to be with her. Their money and social position helped: they were lodged not in stinking cells but in the house of the jailer, Edward Scadding. ‘Nothing can have been more respectful than his behaviour.' Mrs Leigh-Perrot reported to Mountague Cholmeley. But one of her worst miseries was seeing what her ‘dearest husband was going through: the ‘vulgarity, dirt, noise from morning till night’. Her husband was in constant pain, and the only medical man available combined his profession with dealing in coals and manufacturing tiles, suggesting his practice was less than successful. Greasy toast laid on her husband’s knees by the children, and a smoking chimney, did not help. Worse, Mrs Scadding licked her knife. Family and friends rallied round and visited but there was no privacy. Chambers, Mrs Leigh-Perrot’s maid of long standing, had died, and Mrs Leigh-Perrot missed her attendance.
    On 11 September, a month after the incident, an application for bail was made. But as Mrs Leigh-Perrot had been found with the white lace in her possession, bail was refused. Mrs Austen offered to send either or both of her daughters to keep their aunt company. Presumably this generous gesture was made with their agreement. If it was so, it involved heroic sacrifice on Jane’s part, as she never liked her aunt very much. Mrs Leigh-Perrot, to her credit, refused, saying she could never allow ‘these elegant young women’ to be ‘inmates in a prison’.
    Mountague Cholmeley had promised to attend the trial but was laid up (or claimed to be) with the gout himself. The trial was held on 29 March 1800, eight months after the offence was said to have been committed. Mrs Austen again offered her daughters as support but their aunt again nobly refused. ‘To have those two young creatures gazed at in a public court would cut me to the very heart.’ Their brother James, always a favourite with the childless Leigh-Perrots, would have gone but his horse had fallen on him and he had a broken leg.
    Charles Filby, who had served Mrs Leigh-Perrot at the haberdasher’s, swore he had seen her take the lace and conceal it under her cloak. Cross-examined, he admitted he had been a bankrupt. Sarah Rainer, who also worked there, swore she had seen Filby pack the parcel and that he had put into it only black lace. Elizabeth Gregory swore she had found the white lace on Mrs Leigh-Perrot. The judge invited the prisoner to make her defence. At the time defence counsel were not allowed to address juries on their clients’ behalf, only to examine witnesses for their own side and cross-examine those for the prosecution.
    Speaking in her own defence, Mrs Leigh-Perrot argued that she was too rich to steal. She had inherited an estate in Barbados. (In old age she boasted to her great-nephew James-Edward Austen-Leigh that she dined with thirty families and employed a housekeeper, a cook, a housemaid, a footman, coachman, gardener, and a gardener’s boy who also waited at table.) She claimed that the parcel’s being still in her hand an hour after leaving the shop was in her favour. She called witnesses in her defence. One was John Crouch, a pawnbroker, who said he had had dealings with Filby. A Miss Blagrave said that on 19 September she had bought a veil at the shop but found two in her parcel when she got home. Five Berkshire neighbours and three Bath tradesmen testified to Mrs Leigh-Perrot’s honesty.
    The trial took six and a half hours but the jury stayed out for only fifteen minutes before bringing in a verdict of ‘Not guilty’. There were emotional scenes in court and the case was reported in the
Bath