History of Dover

Isabelle Maclean the wife of the man committed on Saturday, was brought up by Police Sergeant Geddes charged with being drunk and disorderly and causing an obstruction in Northampton Street between nine and ten o’clock on Saturday night. The defendant who protested with tears that she had never before seen the inside of a Police Station, but whose appearance very much belied her assertion carried in her arms a poor emaciated child of about five years of age. The Superintendent of Police said there was no doubt this little object was carried about by the defendant to excite compassion, the child’s knees being in a dreadful state of disease. On the bandages in which the poor little creatures were enveloped being removed, a sight was presented which fully substantiated the superintendent’s statement and caused almost everyone in the court to turn away in pity mingled with disgust. The magistrates sent the defendant to the House of Correction for fourteen days with hard labour and directed that the childshould be sent to the Union. (1858)