AN HABITUAL'S HISTORY

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 234, 8 February 1911, Page 6

AN HABITUAL'S HISTORY

I HOW HE WAS BORN INTO CRIME. MEETS HIS FATHER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN GAOL. "My soul is hungry to know what home is, and to mix with respectable people." It is with these tragic words that Charles Ronald Macpherson, an habitual criminal now serving sentence in New Plymouth gaol, in a covering letter to Mr. Justice Cooper, tells the story of his life that must make people think hard of prison methods old and new. His case is now engaging the attention of the Minister of Justic*. Macpherson was sentenced by Mr. Justice Cooper to six months' imprisonment with hard labor at Christchurch on May 12, 1910, for theft from the Spiritualists' Church, Christchurch, and declared an habitual criminal. He admitted the following previous convictions: Ballarat, house-breaking—sentence, three months; Ballarat, theft, eighteen months; Sandhurst, theft twelve months; Melbourne, theft from the person, five years; Sydney, garrotting, twelve years; Pietermaritzburg, house-breaking, thre« years; Johannesburg, house-breaking, four months; Johannesburg, house-break-ing, twelve months. In a verbal statement made to his Honor on that occasion he said his father was a criminal; his mother he had never known. The first knowledge he had of his father was during one of his terms of imprisonment in Pentridge gaol, when he found that a long-sentence prisoner, with whom he was working in a gang there, was his own father.

"CAUGHT YOUNG." "The written statement of his life up to the time I sentenced him is very interesting," said Mr. Justice Cooper, in placing the documents before the Minister. "I have no reason to doubt the truth of the matters referred to in it. This man was born of criminal parents, he has never had a mother's care, his own father led a criminal life, and from the time he was two and a half years old until he was thirty-two years of age he wa» practically always under restraint. From the time he attained th« age of nine years, with the exception of the time he was serving in South Africa under General Buller and the Marquis of Tullebardine, he led a criminal life j and was, with brief intervals, always in I gaol. His case seems to me to be an obI ject lesson establishing the utter failure of the old system of treatment in other English communities of neglected children and of juvenile and adult criminals. This man was 'caught young.' He was, when the State first obtained control of him, barely able to walk and talk —an infant a little over two years old. With a humane and intelligent system of training he might have been educated to a life of morality and have become a useful member of society. He is really a 'manufactured' criminal. ] believe the reforms you have introduced into this Dominion in the new method of treatment of unfortunates who have been born into this world handicapped, as this man seems to have been, from the time of birth will in the future result in the salvation of many who, otherwise, if treated under the old system, would become, as this unfortunate man has become, miserable creatures, menaces to the community, and without hope in this world. I commend his statement to you as one worthy of consideration, and affording a typical instance of the utter failure of the old system of criminal treatment. I, ot course, cannot make any recommendation. I ask you to forward the statement to the board for its investigation and consideration. As it is a 'human document,' and one which must be of great interest to you in peruse, I send it in the first instance to you.",—Wellington Times.