stealing

Supreme Court

1855

Source: New York Times, 27 July 1855

The Halifax Acadian Recorder says: A young man named McNab was lately convicted before the Supreme Court in Cape Breton, on a charge of stealing fifteen pence, and condemned to twelve months' imprisonment in the Provisional Penitentiary, where he is now undergoing the shockingly unmerciful sentence. Circumstances may have seemed, perhaps, in the eyes of the Judge that presided on the trial, to render it expedient that the accused should be punished with astounding severity; yet the antecedents of the unfortunate young man, and of those who instigated the prosecution, furnish the world at large with the strongest possible grounds, we understand, for judging altogether differently.