Mary Ann Tocker

At the time of the trial, Mary Ann, her widowed mother and younger siblings were living in Plymouth.

However, Mary Ann could not be silenced and Richard took out the indictment for libel that brought her to court in Bodmin as if she were the sole writer of the letter.

On 4 August 1818, Mary Ann entered the crowded courtroom accompanied by her brother, Henry Tocker, and one sister.

The exact charge against the Defendant, as read out in court, was that of, ‘Committing a most serious offence, in slandering the character of a gentleman in high judicial situation, by imputing to him practices of the greatest criminality, in a letter published in a newspaper called the West Briton.’ [4] The letter was then read out by the barrister for the prosecution.

In it Richard Gurney was accused of gaining his position through the borough mongering system and of neglecting his duties as a Judge while himself outlawed for debt.

"[5] Finally, Mary Ann asked that, as the prosecution was only nominally at the suit of the crown, the real prosecutor, Richard Gurney, might be called so that she could compel him to admit the facts.

He told them that the publication was 'libellous in the highest degree, as it charged in the strongest way possible, a gentleman filling a high judicial position with the grossest corruption.'

Mary Ann later commented on the reaction of the crowds: “Even the Ex-Vice Warden, his father and brother, these pious and charitable pastors who came to witness my condemnation and ruin, must have heard the loud cheering of the different parties of legal gentlemen at the principal inn in Bodmin on receiving the news.”[6] The reporter from the Treman's Exeter Flying Post was the first to publish an account of the trial on 13 August.

In her dedication and thanks to, “The Honest, patriotic and intrepid jury,” she claims she was motivated by, “the strongest principle in human nature – resistance to oppression.” By 17 August, The Times of London was reporting on the trial: “The justice of her cause and her powerful eloquence secured her success.

Her extraordinary abilities have raised her to considerable notice and her company is now anxiously courted in the first societies.”[7] Mary Ann's cause was taken up by leading radicals of the day.

Fairburn's edition stressed the novelty of an appearance of a woman in court with the title, “A Female Orator!

Mary Ann lived to see how the Reform Act 1832 did away with the corrupt electoral practices of the rotten boroughs.

Marks gives his account of the trial and recommends to his readers that they should regard Mary Ann as a forerunner of their profession.

While Mary Ann may not have been connected to any of the radical movements of the nineteenth century, she is recognised as having inspired other women.

"Mary Ann Tocker, who braved a libel to expose political corruption, inspired many other women with her forthright public radicalism and even led Thomas Hardy to write the anonymous letter to the Black Dwarf calling for woman's rights.

"[9] Like other early women radicals, Mary Ann educated herself and was motivated by her own experiences of injustice to argue for reform.