From the Southeastern Gazette, 31 July 1866 Assizes 9.bmp"

Burglary at Boxley.

Wm. Ansell, 22, tailor, was indicted for committing a burglary, and stealing a coat and other articles, value 10s., the property of James Wire, at Boxley, on the 27th June. Mr. Joseph Kaye was for the prosecution,

Prosecutor said he was a beerhouse keeper at Boxley, and went to bed on the night of the burglary, between half-past ten and eleven o’clock. As far as he knew everything was safe. He got up next morning at about five o’clock, and found the back and front doors open, and that a hole had been made in the shutter, by which a man could put his hand in and withdraw the bolt of the door. He afterwards discovered that he had lost the coat produced. He subsequently saw the prisoner at Maidstone, when he admitted to him that he had taken the coat.

P.C. Blake, of the Maidstone force, deposed to meeting the prisoner at 20 minutes to 6 on the morning of the 28th June down by the river. Prisoner was coming from the direction of Aylesford to Maidstone. He was carrying a bundle, and witness asked what he had got, and he said it was a coat. He then asked to see it, and prisoner showed it to him.

Prisoner asserted that he found the bundle on the road between Maidstone and the prosecutor’s house.

Prisoner was found guilty. He admitted a previous conviction for burglary, under the name of George White, at Lewes, last year; and was now sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude.