Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
15 January 1840
Court of Quarter Sessions
THURSDAY.
Before the Chairman, JOHN LORD, J. E. MANNING, and H. C. SEMPHILL, Esqs., J.P.’s
HANNAH STEEL [sic], an interesting looking girl apparently not more than 14 and 15 years of age was indicted for stealing two pairs of stockings, value 6s, the property of RICHARD WINDEYER, Esq. The prisoner had only been a few weeks in the prosecutor’s services, when MRS. WINDEYER finding her drawers several times in a deranged state, and suspecting the prisoner of having paid a larcenous visit, gave her warning to quit her service. On the morning she was going away, Mr. WINDEYER cautioned her against taking anything with her which was not her own, and telling her, that if she did not attempt to do so, no notice would be taken of her having previously visited her mistress’ drawers.
Notwithstanding this caution, and the promise to attend to it, one pair of her mistress’ stockings was found upon her person, and another pair in her bundle. —Guilty—but recommended to mercy on account of her youth. It being intimated to the Court, that the prisoner’s father had formerly been gaoler at Windsor, the Chairman observed, in passing sentence, that she would not on that account, be sent to the Factory, where the depraved women there generally entertained an ill-feeling towards any members of a family, one of whom had been placed in authority over them. The prisoner was accordingly sentenced to be confined in the gaol of Sydney for three months, and every third week of that period to be placed in solitary confinement.
CITATION
Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of HANNAH STEELE,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18400115/, accessed [insert current date].
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