When Hopwood became Recorder of Liverpool he was able for the first time to put his principles into execution. The kind of thing that had been going on all over Lancashire was instanced in one of his charges to the grand jury after he had been a year or two in office. “A woman,” he said, “pleaded guilty before me of stealing some articles of little value. I looked at the record of her history. She had just come out after three several sentences of penal servitude a poor, broken-down, miserable being. Her first severe sentence anterior to the above was one year’s imprisonment for stealing a pound or two of butter. Her first seven years’ sentence was for stealing some trifling quantity of butter again. Her second seven years was for stealing some butcher’s meat. From this she had been out a month and was again committed and sentenced to another seven years for stealing a duck from a poulterer’s shop. Twenty-two years for five or ten shillings’ worth of food. It calls to mind Hood’s passionate cry, ‘That bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap.’ Every one of
these offences points to the pressure of extreme want. I gave her a slight punishment and have never seen her since.”
And that is what happened in practice. It was found that very many of these petty criminals pleaded guilty at Liverpool Sessions, received a light sentence, and came out with a hope and intention, often fulfilled, of leading honest lives. Others, of course, fell again and again into bad ways, but those, he argued, were really persons who wanted some form of asylum rather than a gaol, where their feeble will power could be protected from the temptations of the world. These long terms of penal servitude for petty thefts were survivals of the old criminal code. In the middle ages a thief was hard to catch, and probably when he was caught the best use to put him to was to hang him. Nowadays the thief is comparatively easy to catch, and therefore the hanging of him when caught ceases to be a sensible action. One of Hopwood’s arguments was that at his sessions prisoners pleaded guilty and gave no trouble to the prosecutor, whereas in the days of harsh sentences prisoners pleaded not guilty and juries hesitated to convict. Another of Hopwood’s reasons for weighing carefully the length of a sentence was—as he often reminded us—that every year, every month, nay, every day that is added to a prisoner’s sentence is too often a year or a month or a day added to the misery of guiltless women and children, whose lives and happiness depend on the return of the wretched men whose liberty is forfeit.
I have often heard Hopwood discuss these matters, and always with profit to myself. The mere fact that such long sentences could be defended was, to him, evidence that the passing and witnessing of such sentences led to a moral deterioration—a hardening of the moral nature of both judges and spectators. I think this is true. We have recognised the truth of it in relation to public executions, and there is no doubt that to be a part of the working machine of the criminal law blunts the edge of compassion. Further, one effect of long sentences on prisoners was to make them commit worse crimes and to resist capture by violence. That is an aspect of criminal policy that is apt to be overlooked by those who clamour for harsher and stronger measures against evil-doers.
One of Hopwood’s best attributes was that calm, reasoning detachment of mind which enabled him to understand the point of view of the poorer classes on our administration of justice. What the bottom dog sees when he puts his nose over the dock and blinks at the learned Recorder and his brother magistrates of the city, is a very different picture of Justice from that which we behold so complacently from our side of the railing. To him it seems a mere mockery to behold Justice, well fed and prosperous, blind to the many frauds and much misconduct of its own class, pompously and Pharisaically denouncing the less guilty, the mere stealing of something to eat or something to clothe, by sentences which should be reserved for real and atrocious
crime. Certainly, it makes one uneasy to remember how many successful and fraudulent schemes have swept away the savings of the working classes into respectable broadcloth pockets—even magisterial pockets—and the law has found no remedy and no punishment. But the scandal is not a new one, and is well sanctioned by precedent. Our forefathers rhymed it, in their easy-going way:
You prosecute the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But leave the larger felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose.