BABY IN GAOL

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 3873, 20 November 1928, Page 4

BABY IN GAOL

REMOVAL FROM THE MOTHER. CURIOUS CASE IN SYDNEY. Sydney, Nov. 8. There is a notorious woman housebreaker known to the local police who is serving a sentence of three years’ imprisonment, and her case becomes rather complicated from the fact that she is the mother of a young baby, which has gone to gaol with her. Naturally this fact has provided food for much outcry and agitation on the part of certain individuals, with the result that the authorities have been forced to make an immediate decision as to what is to be done with the child.

Actually there is no regulation to determine how long a baby may remain in gaol with a mother who has been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. Such cases are not very common, and the prison authorities take the view that most people would take, that it is better for an infant to be separated from its mother than to be brought up in a gaol atmosphere. So, in the case under review, the baby is being placed in an institution.

On previous occasions the same woman has taken her children to gaol with her, while two of her babies were actually born in Long Bay prison. In the latter cases no attempt was made to part the infants from their mother, because they were still tiny mites by the time she had completed her sentence.