"SIX MONTHS HARD LABOUR FOR YOUNG WOMAN"

April 30th 1943

SIX MONTHS HARD LABOUR FOR YOUNG WOMAN - LONG LIST OF OFFENCES - BROKE INTO HOUSE AT NIGHT

A bit of an unusual one for this blog post, as while it wasn't rare to find examples of women breaking the law between 1919-1945, (In Grantham at least), there were very few cases in which the woman was given a custodial sentence of this magnitude.

23 year old Emily Hunter had managed to remove the blackout pane, breaking the glass beneath and broke into a house in order to steal a coat, worth an enormous £13. She was described as having left her work "for no good reason", and had been "knocking about...living rough, visiting public houses and generally getting into a bad way". Hunter broke into the house during the night, while the occupant was asleep upstairs, and stole the coat.

Curiously, the coat was later recovered after being discarded and "very badly mutilated".

My great grandfather arrested her in Nottingham, and reported that she said to him after arrest, "Yes, I was hungry. I was in the house when the woman came in, and it frightened me." She'd previously been prosecuted for theft, and been turned out of the family home by her mother after apparently continuing to steal from the home.

The court heard another 15 cases taken under consideration, including the theft of a children's charity box, a "pair of slacks", and obtaining beer and cigarettes from a public house by fraud. Quite the criminal entrepreneur.

The court decided to charge on only one matter, in order to be able to hold themselves to giving her just the six months hard labour!

#theft #hardlabour

OTHER NEWS: MOST DESPICABLE CRIME! (To be reported on another blog post)

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