"JUSTICES' JUSTICE" AT SPALDING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4527, 23 September 1875, Page 3

"JUSTICES' JUSTICE" AT SPALDING.

- (From the Daily Telegraph, July 12.) . To-morrow evening, in the House of Commons, Mr. Ritchie will ask the Home Secretary whether his " attention has been directed to a report of the case of Sarah Chandler, of Spalding, aged thirteen, who, on a visit to her aunt, had plucked a flower from a geranium, for which she has been sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment and' four years in a reformatory ; and whether, if the facts of the case are as reported, he proposes to take any steps in the matter?" The circumstances to which Mr. Eitchie's question refers have already been made public, and are prima facie even more extraordinary than the terms of his notice, which have been very moderately couched, would lead us to suppose. It appears that Sarah "Chandler, this little girl of thirteen, had gone to see her aunt, an old lady who resides in an almshouse on the outskirts of Spalding, and that on her way home she had' fallen in love with a bright red geranium, all one blaze of vermillion blossom, and temptingly adjacent to the highway. She seems to have plucked from the plant one solitary spike of flowers—a piece about the size of what is familiarly known as " a buttonhole ;" and it was for this heinous offence that she was hauled before the Spalding Bench, in petty sessions duly sitting. The case was a serious one, and the magistrates met—a terrible show. At present wo know very little of these gentlemen, although we freely confess that we should like to hear something more about them. There was Mr. Ball, Mi-. Harrison, and Mr. Taylor—each of whom doubtless'-signs himself in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation—' Armigero ;' and has done any time these three hundred years, as all his successors gone before him have done, and all his ancestors that come after him may." With these three lay justices sat also two gentlemen in holy orders—certificated and salaried preachers of that Gospel the first Teacher of which called His disciples together, and took a little child and put it in the midst of them, and taught His listeners, amongst other things, to be gentle and tender to the little ones. Of these two clergymen, the one, the Rev.;J. T. Dove, is vicar of Cowbitt, a parish with a population of G-18. souls. The other, the Rev. Edward Moore, has still better reason to thank Providence for the pleasant lines in which liis place has been cast. He is a canon of Lincoln, he is a rural dean, he is a surrogate, he is a sinecure incumbent of Wykeham Chapel, and he is, to conclude the list, vicar of Spalding. Such were the five gentlemen before whom little Sarah Chandler was ordered to hold up her hand and to say guilty or not guilty to the heinous charge preferred against her. Whether she was kindly , advised to plead guilty and to throw herself upon the clemency of her judges—a mode of saving the Ccurt mmecessary trouble in securing a conviction whi c h was first invented by Lord Chief Justice Jcfferies, and which our stipendiary magistrates have before now been known to adopt—this we are not told ; but whether she owned her offence or whether she put it upon her accusers to make good their charge, the case could hardly have taken long. The flower had been gathered, and it was in her possession. Possibly, even, some convenient witness had seen her pluck it. The crime was " flat burglary as ever was committed," or at any rate larceny, under the Larceny Acts, and as such it was opon to the Bench to visit it with a fine of a shilling, or even, taking the tender years of the child into account, to read her a suitable admonition, and let her o-o. Did the worthy magistrates adopt either ot these courses ? No. Did they fine her a pound—or two pounds—or five pounds and costs ? jSTo. ' Did they caU her father up, and bind him over in his recognisances for his little girl's better behaviour in the future? No ; they did none of these things. What they did was to send a young girl of tender years to the common gaol, there to herd for a fortnight with thieves, pickpockets, and bad women ; and —as if this were not enough—they ordered her to be detained for a further period of four entire years in a common reformatory school, there to associate every day of her life with the worst sort of juvenile offenders, and then to come out upon the world at the age of seventeen—just as she is growing into womanhood—disgraced beyond all hope of recovery. It is said—we do not know whether truly or not—that the child is a girl of good character, . and has never before been convicted or even accused. But what, after all, does this matter ? Even if it were Sarah Chandler's second offence instead of her first—ay, or even her third or fourth—the sentence is a monstrous, a cruel, and £.n unjust one. Because a child picks a geranium blossom, worth a penny at the outside, it surely is not right to consign her four whole years to the living tomb of a reformatory school, with its contaminating influences and its hard system of quasi-penal servitude. Have those who thus condemned her no children of their own ? Have they no idea how bright and happy and merry a thing a child's life is? Do thoy know, or have they ever tried to realise, what four years in a reformatory actually means, that they lightly pass such a. sentence? Do they understand the meaning, of the word "scandalizein" —very inadequately rendered by our "offend"—in a passage which ought to be familiar 'to them ? And, if so, what do they think of the possible influence of their sentence of four' year's removal from all the tender influences of home upon a child whose offence, forsooth, has been that which every child commits when it has the chance ; possibly—who can say '—with some sort of wild instinct which tells it that bright flowers, like the fresh air and the sunshine and the song of the birds, are free to all who love such things. Let us hear a little more of this case. Let us have the depositions, 'reduced to writing, and setting out the evidence upon which Sarah Chandler was sent to gaol. ___________„