On the evening of 24 October 1787, London’s warmth came not from hearths but from arguments. In a crowded public house off Farringdon Street, John Millan shared ale, words, and, by night’s end, blame for a man’s death.
The quarrel
It began as so many Georgian tragedies did — with drink and misunderstanding. Millan and the deceased, a man named James Carter, had been drinking companions for hours, trading jokes and jibes until the mood soured. Witnesses said Carter mocked Millan’s poor luck at cards and accused him of “pocketing a penny not his own.”
Witness: “Mr Millan bade him hold his tongue or he’d make him.”
Prosecutor: “What followed?”
Witness: “A blow, my lord. Mr Carter fell backward upon the bench.”
Carter rose again, muttering that “no harm was done,” but within an hour he collapsed outside the alehouse and never spoke again.
The trial at the Old Bailey
The court convened on 24 October 1787, the same date as the indictment, charging John Millan with feloniously killing and slaying James Carter — an act of manslaughter if proven, murder if malicious, and accident if unfortunate.
Millan looked bewildered in the dock — a working man with ink-stained fingers, perhaps a clerk or copyist by trade. He admitted to striking Carter but swore he meant no serious harm.
Millan: “He gave me words, sir, and I gave him one tap to silence him — not with force, not in anger.”
Judge: “And yet the man died?”
Millan: “Aye, my lord — but of his own constitution, not my blow.”
A surgeon’s testimony confirmed that Carter had fallen on the corner of the bench, fracturing his skull. It was enough to raise sympathy in the courtroom.
Surgeon: “The injury was more the fall than the fist.”
The jury deliberated briefly and returned a verdict of Not Guilty, concluding that the death was accidental and not the result of deliberate violence.
Why this mattered
The Millan case sits at the crossroads of Georgian law and human frailty. The Old Bailey distinguished sharply between intent and consequence; a drunken scuffle that ended in death did not always make a murderer. For ordinary Londoners, that nuance meant the difference between freedom and the gallows.
Millan left the court a free man — sobered, perhaps, by how close he had come to joining the city’s ghosts.
Source
R v. John Millan (t17871024-64), trial at the Old Bailey, 24 October 1787, charge: manslaughter. Verdict: Not Guilty.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online
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