London Courier and Evening Gazette 16 December 1815.

OLD BAILEY, Dec. 15. PUBLIC OFFICE, BOW-STREET.

A letter-carrier belonging to the Post-office, was charged with feloniously stealing a letter containing bank notes to the amount of £6. It appeared that the prisoner was employed as a deliverer of letters at Woolwich. On the 15th of October last a letter was sent from the Portsmouth Post-office, written by Isaac Wavell, and put into the Post-office by Alexander Wilson, his son-in-law, which contained a £5 Bank of England note and a £1 note directed to Mr. Thomas Green, at Woolwich. In the letter Mr. Wavell requested Mr. Green to acknowledge receipt of it, which not being done caused some suspicion and an inquiry took place, and there was no doubt that the letter and its contents had been embezzled.

On the 25th of October the prisoner called upon Mr. Michael Prebble, who keeps the "Old Chatham" public-house, in Woolwich, and requested him to go with him, as he had something of very great importance to communicate, which the landlord complied with, when the prisoner confessed to him in great agitation, that he had been guilty of the crime of robbing a letter entrusted to his delivery, directed to Mr. Green, near the Woodlands, in Woolwich, and that a £5 Bank note, which was in the letter, he paid to Mrs. Prebble, the landlord's wife. Mr. Prebble advised him to send the money as soon as possible to the person who the letter was directed to, and to acknowledge his crime to the Post-office.

In about a fortnight or three weeks after the prisoner told Mr. Prebble, the landlord of the public-house, he had raised the money and put it into a letter directed as the one he had stolen, which Mr. Prebble put into the Post-office for him. Mr. Green received the letter, which was anonymous, and in which the writer confessed to have taken the £6 out of the other letter, attributing the cause of the act to very great distress. The writer had then got over his trouble, and had returned what he had taken. Hoped to receive a letter from Mr. Green, to be left at the "Hulk" Public-house, saying he was satisfied, and that no more notice would be taken of it, which would materially serve a distressed being. The prisoner was committed for further examination.