It is always a bad sign when a defendant appears in the dock and is said to answer to more than one name. It suggests a ‘known’ criminal who is trying to keep their head down so as not to be processed up through the criminal justice system to a higher court where they might get a stiffer penalty.

Anne Hogarty was also known as Anne Flannaghan [sic] and Anne Sullivan but more importantly for her she was known to the police and the courts as someone who passed (or ‘uttered’) counterfeit money.

On this occasion she had attempted the simple ruse of waylaying  a little girl in the street and promising her a penny if went and fetched her a loaf of bread. The child rushed off with a ‘bad shilling’ in her mitt and handed it over at Mr Wheeler’s bakery on Orchard Street, Westminster. He spotted it instantly and grabbed her, demanding to know where she’d come by the coin.

The nine year-old girl pointed out Anne in the street who tried and failed to make a swift getaway and on Monday the 29 October 1860 she was hauled up before the magistrate at Westminster Police court. The Mint solicitor attended to press the charge and two publicans gave evidence that Anne has uttered bad coins on their premises as well. She tried to deny it but there was a ‘respectable’ witness who saw her talking to the child and the justice was also informed that in May 1859 Anne had served nine months for a similar offence.

Her previous convictions had caught up with her and so she was committed for trial at the Old Bailey, sadly I can find no record of what happened to her there.

[from The Morning Chronicle, Tuesday, October 30, 1860]