Miles Weaver
Preston Herald – Saturday 10 April 1886
Miles Weaver, 11, schoolboy was indicted at the Preston Quarter Sessions on Thursday for stealing two pairs of boots, the property of, David Lindow, at Leyland, on the 2nd of April. Mr Shee, prosecuted. The boots were taken by the prisoner from the window of a shop in Queens Street, Leyland. He took them home and told his mother he had found them on a doorstep. She handed them to the police and the robbery was discovered. The jury convicted the prisoner. Mr Shee stated that for a previous offense the Leyland Magistrates had sent the prisoner to a reformatory, but some benevolent persons wrote to the Home Secretary, who gave it as his opinion that he ought to have gone to an industrial school, and ordered his release. The Leyland magistrates asked the Home Secretary what should be done with him when he again came before them, and he replied, leaving it to their discretion. They, therefore, thought it right to send him to the sessions for trial. The chairman, addressing the prisoner, said that on a former occasion some extremely injudicious person had induced the Home Secretary to discharge the prisoner from the Reformatory, and for anything he knew he may discharge him again. That would not, however, prevent them doing their duty, and he would be committed to prison for ten days, and to Bleasdale Reformatory for five years.