Page:Discipline in school and cloister (1902).djvu/115

 Ill-Treatment of Female Pupils.

We frequently hear of the low-bred and licentious of our sex ill-treating young helpless females; but to find a minister of the gospel convicted of so base and unmanly an assault is a scandal to his office, and an aggravated disgrace to human nature.

This abhorred man, a clergyman and schoolmaster at Newton near Manchester, was brought up to receive the judgment of the King's Bench at Westminster, in consequence of having been convicted at the last Lancashire Assizes on two indictments for assaulting and whipping Mary Ann Gillicrand and Mary Barlow, his scholars.

The defendant delivered in the affidavits of several females who had been his scholars in their youth, declaring upon oath that they never saw him take the slightest liberty with his pupils in an improper way, or whip them severely, and that they thought him a fit person to be intrusted with the instruction of youth.

Mr. Scarlett addressed the court in mitigation. The punishment, he said, that the court would feel it due to justice to inflict would be of little additional consequence to