Many of the hearings listed under the police courts involved crimes such as stealing items as diverse as a fork and spoon, watches or clothing, being drunk and disorderly, using bad or foul language, or the more alarming such as ill-treatment of a child or an animal, for example, an ass, a donkey, a horse, a goat or a cock. Frequently, very stiff sentences were handed down for pathetically petty crimes committed by the deprived or hungry
, or even by children as young as nine or ten. At other times, there seemed to be a high level of tolerance towards parents who abandoned or cruelly treated their children.
