“He’d steal your food off your plate, look at him.” The juror beside Thomas leant towards him and covered his mouth with a hand. James looked a pitiful soul, but Thomas watched him lift his chin and pull scrawny shoulders straight as he cleared his throat and looked straight ahead at the empty judge’s chair. James Williams looked half starved, his skin chalky white, dark hollow eyes and an open sore on his nose, fresh specks of blood holding at the surface. The same age and height, although there was no sign of well-fed flesh on this lad. Then James Williams appeared and the next thing that Thomas Bostock thought as he leant forward from the elevated jurors’ bench, was that he looked just like his own son. He had heard the boy coming up the stone steps from the cells, the clank of confining metal and a sigh, either in preparation or resignation it wasn’t clear. It was the smell of him that hit Thomas from the start – the unmistakable odour of unwashed limbs and orifices, a sour smell of sweat and fear. But naturally we were there for writing inspiration and then asked to produce a piece for our following session. It is a fascinating and somewhat sobering attraction, free to enter and well worth a look if you’re ever in Monmouth. My writing group recently visited the renovated courtroom and cells in our town hall, which in 1839 hosted the Chartist trial of South Wales.
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