RESIDENT MAGISTRATE'S COURT.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume IX, Issue 296, 15 December 1874, Page 2

RESIDENT MAGISTRATE'S COURT.

[Before LowniEit Bboad, Esq., E.M.] William Berry, a young boy, bat an oM offender, who las already been imprisoned and whipped for larceny, was charged by W. Wright with stealing an iudiarubber hosj of the value of 158. The case having been fuliy proved, his Worship said that the boy was an old offender, although bo young in years.. It was not long ago he was punished for larceny, and now he was before the Court again for a similar offence. He would have 6eut him to the Navai Training School at Auckland for three years, but that he did not feel justified in sending so thoroughly bad a boy to that place, which was not intended as a receptacle lor hardened juvenile criminals. He wished ) also to Btate that the prisoner's mother, who,

he believed, was greatly to blame for her children's wicked dispositions, had stopped him in the public street, and endeavored to influence his judgment in favor of the prisoner, but he told her, as he now repeated emphatically, that such a course of conduct was indecent and improper. No one should presume to speak to a judge or magistrate about a ease which he was going to try. The prisoner, however, had nothing to do with that, and it would have no influence in determining his aenttnee, which was that he be im prisoned for two months, and at the end of the first week receive a sound flogging at the hands of the Chief Warder of the gaol.