lancashire quarter sessions

[jansen]

hi
can anyone help. i have found a relative in the liverpool quarter sessions. its dated 4th december 1876 he was found guilty of wounding and the sentence was imprisonment of 10 days & 5 years to the (what looks like) albar. does anyone know what this means?
he was still in preston prison in the 1881 census.
also how long would it have taken for the actual offence to have taken place to it getting to the assizes in the 1870s.
thanks

[mosiefish]

Hi,

I think it was actually the Akbar.  There were others sent to this and also the Clarence on different pages.

Quote from the Maritime Archives:

There were four educational ships moored in the Mersey during the latter part of the nineteenth century.  The training ship HMS Conway , founded in 1859, became a national institution for the training of future officers of the Merchant Navy.  There were also two reformatory ships – the Akbar , for the reform of Protestant Boys, and the Clarence , for Roman Catholic Boys.  The fourth training ship, moored on the Mersey, was the TS Indefatigable , a charitable institution founded in 1864, to give sea training to boys in poor circumstances.

The quarter sessions were just that! so any offence was tried that occured in the past three months.

Regards,
Mo

[jansen]

hi
 thanks for that info.

the person in question was my 2xgreat grandfather and at the time of the sentencing he would have been about 54 years of age. would this ship sentence have applied to him?

regards

pat baron

[mosiefish]

Hi,

I very much doubt that a 54 year old would be sent to the Akbar so it is possibly someone with the same name.   

Have you tried looking at the online newspapers for your 2nd Gt,Grandfather who was in Preston Prison in 1881?

Regards,
Mo

Edit:  Just had a look in the papers and the one tried in Liverpool was a boy of around 13.