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SWINDLES BY A WOMAN.
At the Bristol and Somerset assizes Sarah Edith Westwood, 40 years of age, and described as well educated, has been charged with obtaining by fraud various sums of money, and also board and lodging, from Charles Kingrose, of Clevedon. The evidence of Mrs. Kingrose shewed that Westwood engaged a suite of apartments at her house and during three weeks’ stay there she obtained loans of money by representing that she had had a fortune of £30,000, of which £10,000 were still left. She said that she was a clergyman’s daughter, and was related to a lady of title, whose son she was going to marry in the spring. She twice hired carriages at Mrs. Kingrose’s expense to drive to Clifton, on a pretence of visiting this lady; but having been accidentally seen and recognised as a convict on ticket-of-leave, her true character was made known to Mrs. Kingrose and she was apprehended. Before the magistrates she admitted that she had undergone two periods of penal servitude; the jury now found her guilty. The judge said the record before him shewed that for a quarter of a century she had led an extraordinary career of crime. Her convictions for frauds at watering places commenced at Hastings in 1859, and were continued at Dover, Margate, Brighton, Southampton, and Portsmouth, followed by terms of penal servitude at Dorchester and Bristol. At the latter place she had been sentenced to 10 years’ penal servitude in 1876. He then sentenced her to 10 years’ penal servitude.
— Rutland Echo and Leicestershire Advertiser, Saturday 10 November 1883 source