The daughter of a Gwinear lawyer, Thomas Wheare Tocker, and Dorothy Hearle, her family became mired in debts and moved to Plymouth where they rented accommodation to friends and relatives.  One such was Richard Gurney, who had secured a supposedly lucrative position as Vice-warden of the Stannaries and who employed Mary Ann’s brother, Henry, as his secretary.  In 1817, Gurney fled to the Continent to escape his gambling and tailoring debts and his pending bankruptcy. Gurney had neither funded his accommodation nor paid Henry his promised salary and correspondence revealed that Gurney’s family had previously  disowned him.

An anonymous letter, penned by Mary Ann and Henry appeared in the West Briton newspaper on June 6th, 1817, which exposed Gurney’s corruption and debts. Gurney pressured the editor to disclose the identities of the writers, which the editor did.  Whilst Henry wrote a letter begging forgiveness, Mary Ann continued her accusations leading to Gurney taking out an indictment for libel in Bodmin.

On this day in 1818, Mary Ann appeared before a judge who stated that she had no defence at which point Henry rose to say it would be defended by the defendant herself against the charge 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.’

For two hours, despite numerous interruptions from the judge, Mary Ann defended herself on the grounds that her letter had not been published from malicious motives and she had only dwelt on the Vice-warden’s misconduct in his official capacity.  She emphasised that men in public office could not complain about fair comment on their behaviour when acting in their appointed role and that the law was perverted when ‘the greater the truth, the greater the libel’ directed the verdict.  Tocker also produced evidence that Gurney had only achieved his position after his father had arranged for Lord Falmouth’s candidate to be returned at the Tregony election, Gurney was declared an ‘outlaw for debt’ and he had been out of the county since 1815 and so had received his salary by deceit. 

The judge insisted that Tocker could not prove anything and also denied her the right to call any witnesses in her defence.  Consequently, Tocker drew her defence to a close with a direct appeal to the jury demanding that they question their feelings if they sent an innocent person to prison and asking that common sense prevailed and stating  ‘I trust that it will be seen this day, that it is more hazardous to commit a crime, than to publish that crime when committed.’
Summing up, the judge told the jury that they could not say this publication was not libel.

After deliberating for half an hour, the jury found Tocker not guilty.