8 OCTOBER

1889 Details were reported today of a daring robbery at the workhouse in Hull. A young man named William Lancaster was charged with having induced another inmate, a boy named Alfred Pearson, to steal a purse containing nine £5 notes, £14 in gold, and 10s. in silver, from a cupboard at the workhouse. The money was the property of George Johnson, the institution's baker and cook. Johnson testified that habitually left his coat in a cupboard of the bread-room when he arrived in the morning. Lancaster, being aware of this, persuaded Pearson to steal the purse if ever he found there was more than £7 in it, and gave the boy a key which fitted the cupboard. After the purse went missing, the police were called and interrogated the boy who confessed what had happened. Lancaster had first told him to bury the purse in a woodshed, then later to hide it somewhere further away. Lancaster had said he would discharge himself, and then change the notes at Leeds, but would return and share the money with Pearson. He had also told the boy they would be able to buy tools with which they would commit burglaries. After Lancaster's arrest, he said, 'This lot will about do me; I'll put a knife into his young guts if I ever have a chance; I'll be hanged for him.' He was later sentenced to fifteen months in prison.