Builth and district
Crime and punishment
  To prison with hard labour  
 

The two Justices of the Peace who heard the case against Mary and Harriet found both women guilty of assaulting Jane Lloyd.
First, the sentence for Mary Cooke...

 
Quarter
Sessions
document

1855
Court document,1855
Court document,1855
Drawing by
Rob Davies

This part of the court papers reads -
"And we adjudge the said Mary Cooke for the said offence...

...to be imprisoned in the House of Correction at Brecon in the said County and there to be kept to hard labour for the space of four calendar months".
Then came the sentence for Harriet Phillips...

Mary and Harriet drawing
Quarter
Sessions
document

1855
Court document,1855
Court document,1855
 

"And we adjudge the said Harriet Phillips for the said offence...
...to be imprisoned in the House of Correction at Brecon in the said County and there to be kept to hard labour for the space of two calendar months".
So Mary was given four months in prison and Harriet received two months. Both were kept to "hard labour", and for women in prison around this time that meant washing, mending, and sewing the prison linen for up to ten hours a day !
There is another interesting document linked to this case among the Breconshire Quarter Sessions papers for 1855, which is shown on the next page...

Locked up in the town lock-up...

 

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