§ DR. KENEALYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he has received a Petition from 698 Hanley Potteries, signed by clergymen and ministers of all religious denominations, and the inhabitants generally, praying for the remission of a sentence passed on three boys named Lewis, Platt, and Lancaster, two of them being nine years old and the other ten, by which they are to be detained in an industrial school until they are sixteen years old; and, if so, whether he intends to take any steps in the matter so as to alter or amend the sentence?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS,in reply, said, that inquiry had been made into the matter, and he found that the magistrates of Hanley Potteries had sent three boys, named Lewis, Platt, and Lancaster, to an industrial school—not a reformatory—until they were 16 years of age, as an act of kindness. An application had been made to him to remit the sentence, and from the information he had received it was hoped that the home of one of the boys was sufficiently respectable to permit of his returning to it, instead of working out his sentence. With regard to the others, their homes were such that it would be no act of kindness to compel them to return to them.