§ MR. ANDERSONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If his attention has been called to a statement in a newspaper of the 28th as to the trial of James Timony, a youth of seventeen, before the Recorder of Belfast and a jury on the 23rd May, and if it be true that the constable was the only witness, and swore that the boy had come voluntarily to him and said "this bar of iron belongs to James Conolly of North Street, and I have stolen it because I have had a row at home and I want to go to prison;" that the jury gave a verdict of larceny but recommended the youth to mercy, and that thereupon the Recorder pronounced sentence of seven years' penal servitude and three years' police supervision; and, if the statement is substantially correct, whether he will take the steps necessary to set aside the sentence?
§ SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHSir, I hope the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Anderson) will excuse me if I answer his Question, as it falls more into my province than that of my right hon. Friend. My attention has been called by the Question of the hon. Member to an article in The London Figaro on this subject. That is a seriocomic periodical published in London, one which, I think, can hardly be supposed to give the most accurate account of matters in Ireland. The statements contained in that article of Timony's case are both inaccurate and incomplete. His age is 19, not 17; he did not come voluntarily to the constable, but the constable stopped him, seeing him with the bar of iron, and interrogated him. The constable was 854 not the only witness; the prisoner was indicted for the larceny as well as for previous convictions, and the jury who found him guilty of the larceny recommended him to mercy in ignorance of his previous convictions. Though so young he had been convicted no less than seven times before, and it appears from the report of the Governor of the Antrim Gaol that among these convictions was one for attempted housebreaking and another for uttering base coin. I may add—though, of course, it does not directly bear on the Recorder's sentence—that Timony's conduct in gaol is reported as very bad; and that as to his family, his brother is a convict now undergoing sentence, and his sister often in gaol, being there at the present moment. I do not think it is a case which requires the interference of the Government.