HC Deb 24 July 1882 vol 272 cc1534-5
MR. EDWARD CLARKE

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- ment, By whose authority and advice there has been, for the first time, inserted in the Commission of Gaol Delivery for the Summer Assize the following proviso:— That, whenever any prisoner in our said gaol shall have been committed for trial at any sessions of the peace within the said county, you shall not deliver the said gaol of such prisoner, but shall order such prisoner to the gaol to take his trial at the quarter sessions to which he is committed; what is the reason of such a departure from former practice; and, whether he is aware that, at Maidstone, three persons charged with larceny and committed, two of them upon the 4th July and one upon the 1st July, have boon ordered by the judge to be kept in gaol until the Maidstone borough quarter sessions in October next, Mr. Justice Hawkins at the same time protesting against being compelled to make such an order when he was ready to try them, and when the result would probably be that they would remain in gaol awaiting trial for a longer period than they would be sentenced to if found guilty of the offences charged against them?

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT

This Proviso has always been in the Commission of Gaol Delivery of the Winter Assize. It has been till recently omitted from the Commissions of the other Assizes; but about a year ago there occurred this scandal and inconvenience—that a number of prisoners had been committed for trial at the Sessions; and when the Assizes came on, and there was a gaol delivery, the persons prosecuting being only bound over for the Sessions did not appear, and seven out of 12 prisoners were discharged without any trial at all. Therefore, it was thought better to make the Commission the same both for the Winter and the Summer Assizes. All that should have been done in this case was that the magistrate who committed the prisoner after the Quarter Session, and before the Assizes, should have committed them to the Assizes.