The court thought it unnecessary to proceed with these cases.
Peace was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude, and the female prisoners to be imprisoned for six months each to hard labour.
CHAPTER LV.
AFTER CONVICTION—A GLIMPSE AT PRISON LIFE.
Charles Peace had not counted on receiving so heavy a sentence, and at first he was much borne down. He had been for a long time under the notice of the constabulary, who felt assured that he had perpetrated a series of robberies without being brought under the ban of the law. Had the authorities been oblivious to this fact, perhaps eighteen months, or at the most two years, would have been the maximum punishment awarded to him.
“Penal servitude,” says an authority on this subject, “is a thing many people hear and read of a great deal, but about which only a certain number know really anything.”
Mr. Charles Reade has touched the question in a masterly manner in his powerful romance of “Never Too Late to Mend,” but happily for the welfare of society at large, and criminals in particular, modifications have been made in the treatment of prisoners since the publication of Mr. Reade’s work.
Peace, as we have already seen, was selfish and unscrupulous.
He would have sacrificed his sister without the slightest compunction of conscience if he could thereby have saved himself.
It transpired, however, at the trial, that he was the principal, his sister and the woman James being but accomplices.