Wateringbury villain (1822)

Post date: Mar 16, 2018 8:28:49 PM

Extract from Stamford Mercury - Friday 29 March 1822

A most villainous robbery was committed at Maidstone, in Kent, a few days since, on the person of a poor man named Young, who had saved sum of nearly £30 in gold and silver coin, from the weekly earnings of himself and wife, when, unfortunately, they took as a lodger a man named Henry Brooker, who came from Wateringbury. One day Brooker pretended to be very ill, and was left in the house alone. When poor Young and his wife came home about six o'clock in the evening, they found the door locked, and, to their great dismay and distress, they soon discovered that their lodger had decamped with all their money (to obtain which had broken open a chest), a silk handkerchief, and the key of the street door. Thus the villain has entirely stripped these honest industrious people of the hard earnings of several years. He had been soldier in the West Kent Militia, and his character was well known in the neighbourhood from whence he came.