§ SIR DE LACY EVANSsaid, he wished, before putting the question of which he had given notice to the noble Lord the Secretary for the Home Department, to take a very short review of the circumstances to which it had reference. The facts of the case, as stated in the Times, were these:—In August last Thomas Unwin, a clerk to the Eastern Counties 4ailway Company, was proceeding along Bishops-gate Street, when he was accosted by a woman, and he walked with her up a court. While conversing there, two men came up to him, one of whom asked him what he was doing with his wife. Unwin became alarmed, and ran into Bishopsgate Street, and soon after discovered that his watch was gone. Several months afterwards the prisoner was apprehended, and Unwin swore she was the woman who was in his company on the night he lost his watch. Mary Hill was tried at the Middlesex Sessions, and convicted. After the verdict, Mr. Serjeant Adams, the chairman, inquired whether any one knew aught of the prisoner's character, whereupon a policeman stated that she was the associate of thieves. The Judge then said 311 that was enough for him, and he sentenced her to seven years' transportation. The prisoner, on hearing this sentence, having previously gone down on her knees to implore mercy, rose up in a towering rage, and exclaimed to the policeman, "Oh, you pig, you pig! you perjured thief!" On that the Assistant Judge said, "The sentence upon you is, that you be transported for ten years." The prisoner was then removed by a policeman, and kept repeating her exclamation. He, therefore, wished to inquire of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether Mr. Serjeant Adams, who presided, sentenced Mary Hill to seven years' transportation for robbery, and to three years' additional transportation for calling a policeman a pig—with a view of founding a Motion thereon, if the facts were as stated, and if the present state of the law were inadequate for enabling the Secretary of State to correct this description of judicial administration.
§ VISCOUNT PALMERSTON saidSir, the case to which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred, is, in some respects, such as he has described it; yet not so in all its circumstances. It is quite true that this woman, Mary Hill, was convicted of a robbery committed under circumstances which, I am told, are now of by no means unfrequent occurrence. That is, it appears a system is now very much in practice by which ladies of engaging manners are wont to decoy gentlemen walking the streets at undue hours into somewhat lonely situations; and that whilst so occupied in conversation—as represented by my hon. and gallant Friend—they sometimes manage to abstract valuable property from the persons of these companions. Well, thereupon issues forth some male confederate, who, claiming the lady for his wife, forthwith commences to reproach the unsuspecting gentleman with having interfered with his connubial rights. A discussion arises, and, as it proceeds, the lady escapes with the booty—the plundered gentleman going his way, feeling exceedingly happy if he escapes without material personal injury. Now, Sir, the lady in question was accused of being a party in a transaction of this kind. She was arrested by the police, but was violently rescued by some of her male confederates. She was afterwards, however, again arrested and brought to trial. Well, the Judge, finding this practice was one of growing frequency, thought it a fit case to visit with transpor- 312 tation; and he thereupon stated that he should transport her for seven years. Thereupon the lady went into a "towering rage," as my hon. and gallant Friend has described it, and a very violent scene took place in court; and it was found a matter of very great difficulty to keep her in the dock, even with the aid of three policemen, and the Judge became apprehensive that again an attempt would be made to rescue her by means of her confederates, some of whom were then in the court. He, therefore, decided to increase the punishment from seven to ten years—and a sentence of ten years was thereupon provisionally recorded. But the Assistant Judge has informed me that that increase was made for the purpose of deterring others from similar violent conduct in court, and that it was-as it is still—his intention to exercise that power which the law gives him of altering the sentence during the continuance of the Session; and he added that the final sentence would be transportation for seven years, being the punishment to which the lady was originally sentenced.