INTERNATIONAL CHILD AND YOUTH CARE NETWORK

17 MARCH 2000
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HISTORICAL GLIMPSES: 150 YEARS AGO

A Juvenile Offender

“On Wednesday, a little lad named John Johnson, stated to be 13 years of age, though he did not appear to be more than ten, was brought before Mr. Hodgson, at the Borough Court, charged with stealing two pies from the window of a small pie shop in Jersey Street, Ancoats, kept by a man named Edward Hayes.

On the previous afternoon, he was seen by a neighbour looking in at the window, and immediately afterwards he passed her house door with two pies. It was subsequently ascertained that the window had been opened and two pies stolen out. The prisoner, in answer to the charge, protested several times that he found the pies on the ground and did not take them out of the window.

Inspector Livingstone, in reply to a question put by Mr. Hodgson, said that the prisoner had been in prison several times. He then read the following list of his convictions: One month, three months and whipped, one month and whipped, three months and whipped, two months and whipped, six months.

When asked how long he had been out of prison, the prisoner replied since last week but one ... Mr. Hodgson said that if anyone had seen him, he (Mr. Hodgson) would have committed him to the sessions, and the probability was that he would then have been got rid* of; as it was, he should summarily commit him for three months.”

*Presumably transported. 

From the Manchester Guardian of July 13th, 1850 and published in the Approved Schools Gazette, September 1950

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An Opinion on Welfare

By the middle of the nineteenth century the weaving trade in the town was in a very bad state of depression and on 1st April, 1849 the Council met to consider the question of relief for the unemployed hand loom weavers. 

It was decided the Council should meet the Heritors and try to take measures with them to provide work for the poor and needy in so far as possible. Later it was decided they should be given work breaking stones for the new roads being made at that time — and the unemployed of that period had to work for their "dole" as the councillors "were of the opinion it was not good for a man to be paid for doing nothing."

Maybole, Carrick's Capital Facts, Fiction & Folks by James T. Gray, Alloway Publishing, Ayr. First published 1972.

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