§ SIR JOHN DORINGTON (Gloucestershire, Tewkesbury)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the case of James Coyle, convicted at the London Sessions on 4th June of robbery at the Victoria Station, against whom a previous conviction and sentence in 1879 of seven years' penal servitude and seven years' police supervision was then proved to the satisfaction of a jury by the evidence of a warder from Millbank, who had examined him with the official description for the marks and scars the person so convicted bore; whether it was subsequently proved, by police evidence, that Coyle was convicted for a minor offence in 1882, and consequently could not be the person identified by the warder as having been convicted in 1879; and, whether he has come to any decision as to giving the French system, under which mistakes are practically impossible, a trial in this country?
§ MR. MATTHEWSYes, Sir; the facts are as stated. I have received a Report from the Prison Commissioners, who inform me that if Coyle had been compared carefully with the marks and description of Hart, whom he was alleged to be, and particularly if Coyle had denied that he was Hart when at the Police Court, the mistake would never have occurred. In this case it was not the system that was at fault, but the inaccuracy of the warder who 848 compared Coyle with the description of Hart. The descriptions in this case show that two only of the marks agree, while six differed. The question of giving the French system a trial in this country has been under the consideration of the Police and Prison Authorities. There are many difficulties in the way of adopting it in this country, and it is doubtful whether equally good results are not obtained under our present system. It is also a question whether legislation would not be required to carry it out effectually. The matter, however, is not being lost sight of.