A SCANDALOUS DECISION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 463, 29 June 1909, Page 3

A SCANDALOUS DECISION.

A really shocking case is reported in recent English newspapers. An inmate of the Union workhouse in Wiltshire was charged with the theft of half a pint of milk belonging to the guardians. A policeman in plain clothes caught him going into the house of a woman named Mrs Francis, whose husband was a complete invalid, and who bad apparently several sickly babies. The man admitted that he did leave about a quarter of the pint of milk he was bringing from the contractor’s with the woman, and acknowledged that he had once done so before. Mrs Francis stated that he called and said, “ Give this drop of milk to the babies,’’ The result of the case is thus recorded ;—" Having retired for a time, the chairman said the Bench had decided to discharge Monk, leaving it to the master to give him extra discipline. In regard to the woman there was no doubt in their minds this had been going on for some time, and she would have to go to gaol for seven days. As she was being taken away the mother of the woman came forward and asked the magistrate to be merciful.” It is astonishing to think (remarks a contemporary) that decisions of this kind are any longer possible in England. To send a woman so circumstanced to prison for seven days would be a responsibility which few people would care to take, even supposing her to have committed some grave offence ; as a punishment for receiving a quarter of a pint of milk its stupidity really almost eclipses its brutality.