§ MR. HOPWOOD (for Mr. P. A. TAYLOR)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is true that an old woman nearly eighty years of age, named Mary Cole, was a few days ago sentenced at the Durham Quarter Sessions to ten years' penal servitude, for stealing an apron and an- 460 other article of the value of fifteen pence; and, if so, whether he will recommend a mitigation of the sentence?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTSir, the history of the case is this. The woman is not 80, as stated, but 77. During the last 20 years she has been 27 times convicted. She was out on ticket-of-leave under a sentence of penal servitude. She was kindly taken by a poor woman into her house, and she robbed her benefactress of all she possessed. She was then tried, and this sentence was then passed upon her. Under these circumstances, I have no intention of recommending a mitigation of the sentence which was passed upon an incurable offender by a Judge in whom everyone, I think, has great confidence. I mean Mr. Warton, Chairman of the Quarter Sessions at Durham. I would venture to submit to those who criticize sentences of this kind that the previous history of offenders should be inquired into, because a false impression is produced when it is supposed that a woman is sentenced to a severe punishment for what appears to have been a slight offence, but when the fact is that she is an incurable offender with whom it is impossible to deal in any other way than by keeping her in prison.