Evidence Type: Newspaper Report
11 December 1841
An elderly and portly dame, with whose presence the officers of the Court seemed intimately acquainted, and who was familiarly addressed by the Magistrate on the Bench as ELIZA FIELD, was brought up on Thursday, before the police Bench, charged with drunkenness. Captain INNES saw Mr MITCHELL referring to find the number of the conviction, and told him he might save himself the trouble, as he perfectly recollected that her last was the thirtieth, on which occasion she had been sentenced to three hundred and sixty hours solitary confinement, and he was afraid that such further punishment would do her some physical harm. She was the greatest nuisance that came before the Court, and he would try to dispose of her for a time, at least. The prisoner soliloquized in a melancholy strain on the harshness of her destiny, which seemed to keep her in perpetual trouble. It is no use, said she, appealingly to the gallant Captain, to get out of confinement. Not in the least Ma’am, replied the Magistrate, as you are sure to take the shortest means of returning to it. Sentenced as an habitual drunkard, and disorderly person, to three months’ imprisonment in the factory.
CITATION
Female Factory Online, (femalefactoryonline.org), “Law Report of ELIZA FIELD,” https://femalefactoryonline.org/law-reports/p18411211/, accessed [insert current date].
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