§ SIR GEORGE JENKINSONrose to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he has obtained further information in reference to the case of a girl under fourteen years of age, who was taken away last week from the Girls' Refuge at Ealing by the Sheriff's Officers for a supposed debt of £53 11s. 2d., and conveyed to White-cross Street Prison, and detained there; and, whether, if that statement be true, any person, has committed a breach of the Law in so arresting and detaining such girl; and, if so, whether he intends to take any further steps in reference to the matter?
MR. BRUCEsaid, that from the information he had received—which however, was not undisputed—he believed the girl had been removed from the Refuge under a mistake as to her age. He could not speak with certainty as to the law on the subject, but he gathered from the text books that an infant might be arrested on a writ of capias ad satisfaciendum, and that an in- 210 fant might be outlawed if above the age of twelve, or even under that age if a female.