An Explicit Account of the remarkable Trial at Croyon in Surry....
Rare Unrecorded Report of a Sensational 1775 Murder Trial, The Only One With a Portrait of the Defendant [Trial]. Butterfield, Jane, Defendant. An Explicit Account of the Remarkable Trial at Croydon in Surry, August the 19th, 1775 of Miss Jane Butterfield, On a Charge of Poisoning the Late William Scawen, Esquire. London: Bailey, Printer, [1775?]. 24 pp. Copperplate portrait frontispiece. Octavo (6-3/4" x 4"). Stab-stitched pamphlet in later plain wrappers, recent paper reinforcement to spine. Moderate toning, light foxing to a few leaves, foot of title page trimmed removing date and part of imprint date and printer name, fore-edge of plate affected by trimming with loss to border but no loss to image. $1,500. * Only edition. Apparently unrecorded, this is the only one of the several accounts of this sensational 1775 murder trial that has a portrait of the defendant. Butterfield met Scawen, an elderly gentleman, when she was fourteen and was persuaded by a female accomplice to live with him as a kind of housekeeper-cum-mistress. When her father disowned her as a result, Scawen apparently had something of a crisis of conscience and promised to act as a new father to her. The two lived together quite happily, and when he grew ill, she became his devoted caretaker. When he died, his doctor, egged on by a suspicious maid, accused her of poisoning him in order to gain the inheritance he had supposedly left. The jury deliberated only ten minutes before acquitting Butterfield. No copies recorded by the English Short-Title Catalogue, OCLC, or Library Hub.
Price: $1,500.00
Book number 74611