BAD EFFECT OF PENNY "DREADFULS"

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3052, 24 November 1908, Page 5

BAD EFFECT OF PENNY "DREADFULS"

A victim of pestilential literature of the "penny dreadful" order — Ronald Seaforth Jones by name—was sentenced at the Wellington Supreme Court yesterday by Mr Justice Cooper. He had pleaded guilty to two charges of breaking and entering, one relating to the premises of Sub-Inspectcr Phair. His Honor said that since prisoner was hefore the court last week he had looked into the Act, and found that he could not send Jones direct to an industrial school, bscause an order could not be made unless the prisoner was under 16 years of age. Prisoner was over that age when he came before His Honor, and the only jurisdiction the court had, therefore, was to make a recommendation to Hia Excellency concerning him. His Honor proposed to sentence him to twelve months' imprisonment, to be kept separate from other prisoners, and would, under the Industrial Schools Act, send a recommendation to His Excellency that the boy be transferred to an industrial school —to HisHHonor 3r r 3 mind the proper place for him.

Mr Wilford, for prisoner: May I suggest the Levin School? His Honor: I will mention the three school 3, and I will suggest that as the parents live nearer Levin His Excellency might consider sending him there. In a brief address to prisoner, His Honor said it was a very sad thing tD see a lad like him in his present place. It was due to the literature he had been reading. But he had already been convicted of theft and ordered to come up for sentence when called upon. Notwithstanding that he evidently continued to commit offences against the law. He would be kept to the school until he was twenty-one years of age if His Excellency transferred him there, and he would not then come in contact with the criminal class as he would to the same extent in gaol. Prisoner was one of those boys who required reforming; it was clear.his parents, who were highly respectable, had not sufficient control over him to keep him from committing breaches of the law.