William Williams, 23, was tried at Middlesex Court on 5 April 1832 for stealing a coat worth seven shillings, the property of William Cole. Cole stated in court: ‘I live in Deptford on 15th March about 11 o’clock at night I left my coat safe on the box of my fly, at Covent Garden Theatre’. The prisoner’s defence was: ‘I was intoxicated’.

Williams was sentenced to seven years’ transportation. He sailed for New South Wales on the Hercules on 14 June 1832.