Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: refused to tell his name. This was a further reason why the defendant should not admit him into his house; for if inn-keepers were compellable to admit all sorts of suspicious characters into their houses at unseasonable hours of the night, there would be a great probability that they would find, when they got up in the morning, that their houses had been robbed. For the defendant, Thomas Price was called. He said, " I reside at Chepstow, opposite to the Bell. In April last, I was disturbed in the night; I was asleep, and I heard a loud noise of tapping at a door. I thought it at my house, and went to my window. I heard Mrs. Ivens ask a person his name. The answer was, ' What is that to you about my name.' Mrs. Ivens said, ' At such a late hour I want to know your name, and where you come from.' The person replied, ' If you must know my name, it is Williams, and I come from Newport; and now you are as wise as you were before, and be damned to you.' Mrs. Ivens then shut the window. I thought the person was either drunk or mad." In his cross-examination this witness said, " I believe Mrs. Ivens said the person was no gentleman. It quite turned my spirits to hear such a bad expression as he used." Coleridge, J. (in summing up). The facts in this case do not appear to be much in dispute; and though I do not recollect to have ever heard of such an indictment having been tried before, the law applicable to this case is this: — that an indictment lies against an innkeeper, who refuses to receive a guest, he having at the time room in his house; and either the price of the guest's entertainment being tendered to him, or such circumstances occurring as will dispense with that tender. This law is founded in good sense. The innkeeper is not to select his guests. He has no right to say ...