Author’s Note

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Author’s NoteAt the beginning of the 19th Century the penalty for robbery of any sort was very severe. A person was hanged for “privately stealing in a shop, warehouse and coachhouse or stable to the amount of five shillings.” Poaching a hare or a pheasant meant as a merciful sentence, transportation in a convict ship to New South Wales, for seven years. The prisons were filthy shambles, the police were inadequate, badly organised and poorly paid, which meant they were often corrupt. A boy arrested for minor pilfering could be sent to prison, flogged, then turned out without a penny in his pocket. Select Committees set up in 1817 produced numerous petitions to Parliament but the Reform Bill was many frustrating years ahead.
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