From Reading Mercury, Oxford Gazette and Berkshire County Paper, March 25, 1833; pg.4; Issue 5821.

INSOLVENT DEBTORS' COURT. - SINGULAR CASE.

An insolvent named Daniel Waghorn applied to be discharged. The insolvent was unopposed, but the circumstances connected with this case were of a very strange and novel description. He kept the "Jolly Sailor" public-house at RAMSGATE, and was besides a mariner, and had done, as he admitted, "a little" in the smuggling line. His debts last October amounted to £500., and the disposition of that sum, or the pretended disposition, caused a lengthened investigation. He stated that he paid a fellow-smuggler, whom he could not now find, the sum of £100 for money borrowed; he was threatened, he said, by a Frenchman, with a prosecution for smuggling, and he went to Calais and paid him £170 to stop it. He purchased there £106 worth of goods, which were lost on bringing them over. On his arrival he had £90 remaining; he paid £75 out of it to his present detaining creditor, and he had now nothing left for his creditors.

The Learned Chief Commissioner declared that this was as gross and infamous case as ever came before that Court, and, notwithstanding the creditors did not think it worth their while to oppose, the Court would visit the insolvent with a severe judgment. The alleged payments were extremely suspicious, and admitting they had been made, the disposition was most fraudulent. The Court sentenced the insolvent to an imprisonment of Fifteen Months.