“And what if it’s a boy?” Kate asked.
He leaned over to brush a third kiss on her forehead. “Then, my love, he is really going to hate being called Lily.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Kate’s trial takes place without an indictment being presented to a grand jury. This is mostly because that step in the process would be boring to read about and boring to write about. In 1842, that step would have been necessary. I’ve taken the liberty of bending time a little in this regard; in 1849 legislation was passed that allowed police magistrates to certify that indictments could proceed to trial without being presented to a grand jury.
In early Victorian England, summary trials (that is, trials without a jury) could come before police magistrates under some circumstances (certain petty, nonviolent crimes). In many instances, particularly for the lower classes, magistrates sat as judges of fact over other crimes, too, so long as the parties agreed that no jury was necessary. It’s not always clear that the parties under those circumstances consented to the lack of jury; in some cases, they may not even have known they were entitled to a jury. Kate’s first abortive trial, interrupted by Ned, is one such. Both the speed and the apparent laxity of the courtroom depicted here are in keeping with the few accounts I’ve read of such proceedings.
Harcroft’s statements to the magistrate as to the elements and legality of abduction of a wife by persuasion were drawn (with little alteration) from Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England—presumably the source of our hypothetical Harcroft’s cribbed notes, anyway. Magistrate Fang was borrowed from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6892-4
TRIAL BY DESIRE
Copyright © 2010 by Courtney Milan
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Courtney Milan, Trial by Desire
(Series: Carhart # 2)
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