Teenagers are jailed for stealing boxes of raisins from grocery yard

At the Preston police court in mid December 1847 three youths John Lawe, aged 14, William Southworth, aged 16, and Thomas Jackson, aged 16, appeared before the Mayor John Paley and a bench of magistrates.

- with Keith Johnson

The prosecutor was Mr. Frederick Myres, a well-respected grocer who had premises in the Strait Shambles. They were accused of entering his rear yard and stealing two boxes of raisins, weighing 84 lbs.

Mr. Myres informed P. C. Hindle that the three accused had been in the yard behind the Wellington Inn with the boxes of raisins. Telling him that he had seen the youths emptying the raisins into a sack and that when he approached them they said they had found them in the street and were going to deliver them to a local bakery. Before they left with their sack of raisins they gave him a handful of raisins, leaving the empty boxes in the yard.