§ MR. LABOUCHEREI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the fact that John Tolley was charged, on 21st April, with having stolen a football, before the Police Court of Halesowen, and that, although there seems to have been no conviction, the Bench ordered the boy to be sent to an industrial school for five years; and whether the Bench has legal power to make this order?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. MATTHEWS,) Birmingham, E.I have received a Report from the Justices, from which I learn that the facts are as stated, the Bench exercising their legal powers under the 15th section of the Industrial Schools Act, 1866, a section which seems to me to have been expressly framed to save the necessity of a conviction in a case like the present, where the evidence showed that the boy was a constant truant from school, and was not under proper management at home.