Page:The Trial, at Large, of William Booth and his Associates.pdf/3

 land to a considerable extent: his family consisted of himself, his wife, George Scot, three men of the name of Yates, John Barrows, and Elizabeth Chidlow; he had two other persons (servants) of the name of Ingeley, who would be brought forward on the part of the prosecution. The house of the prisoner being thus privately situated, was well adapted for carrying on a business which required privacy, and he would now proceed to inform them of the precautions taken by the prisoner to prevent that privacy from being disturbed:—On entering the house you find a passage, which communicates with the kitchen and also with the parlour, but the communication with the parlour was secured by three strong doors; the first was a thick strong oak door, with hinges also very strong, fastened by a lock and seven bolts, five of which bolted one way, that is on that part of the door which opens, the other two bolted the other way, namely, at that part of the door to which the hinges were affixed, and this door was further secured by the upper part of it being covered with iron of considerable thickness; the second door was secured by four strong pieces of wood or wooden bars, going across the whole breadth the door, each being let into the wall by a hole at one end, and the other end falling into a hook or holdfast; the third door was secured by three strong square oak bars, in similar manner to the second; and there was no other communication on the ground floor with that parlour but through these three doors: over that parlour there was a chamber, and over that chamber a garret, and formerly a staircase led out of that passage to these two upper rooms; but when the prisoner's house was searched by the constables from Birmingham, the communication between the staircase and those rooms was stopped, the entrance or door way in both chamber and garret being bricked up, so that the only way to get into that chamber was through a trap door in the cielingceiling [sic] of the parlour, which was fastened down by two iron bars fastened together in the middle, and moving on a pivot, two ends of which were affixed in staples, and the others shut down on hasps, where they could be fastened either by pegs or locks, and these bars when put down formed a × over this trap door; in the cielingceiling [sic] of that chamber was another trap door, which was the only way into the garret over, and which was fastened