Ann Sutherland - "She went away to her cell with an air as light and jaunty as if she had been setting out to her wedding! Poor thing!"

The quotation in the title of this blog is taken from the report of Ann Sutherland's trial of 15th April 1869 which appears in the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser of 23rd April 1869. The reporter's purple prose hints at the contempt with which habitual thieves were viewed at the time.

The Aberdeen Press and Journal of 21st April 1869 provides a more objective report of the proceedings:

"Ann Sutherland (49), was accused of two acts of theft - (1) in January last, two pieces of muslin, pair of wincey sleeves, pair of scissors, etc., etc., the property of John Mitchell, governor of Stonehaven prison, the theft having been committed in or near the prison of Stonehaven; also a waist belt with clasps, a jet brooch, and a metal brooch, belonging to Jessie Smith, then a prisoner in Stonehaven prison; (2) stealing a cap and a towel from a house in Market Lane, New Town of Stonehaven. The prisoner pleaded not guilty. She was defended by Mr. Melville. Evidence was briefly led on both charges. It appeared that the prisoner, very shortly after her release from prison, had got drunk and required the attention of the police, when the charges of theft were at once preferred against her. A long string of convictions for theft from Glasgow, Perth and Fife were proved against the prisoner. The jury unanimously found Sutherland guilty as libelled. Lord Jerviswoode said the prisoner was a melancholy example, apparently, of a hopeless determined thief. The sentence, a lenient one in the circumstances, would be penal servitude for seven years".

The 1871 census, when we find Ann incarcerated in HM General Prison, Perth, helps provide a little more information about her background: she is described as a widow with her occupation given as a "hawker" with her birthplace noted as Glasgow. It would appear that her situation had deteriorated in the preceding decade as the 1861 census reveals that she was at that time a domestic servant living in a household with a family and a number of lodgers described as "cotton weavers" on Green Street, Calton, Bridgeton, between the Trongate and the Gallowgate in Glasgow.

On her discharge from prison in December 1873, Ann Sutherland was required to report to the police in Aberdeen (see image below). Along with her alias of Rose Ann Ferrier or Sutherland, diminutive stature and distinguishing marks, it is interesting to note that she stayed for a short spell of time at 45 Guestrow, otherwise known as the Victoria Lodging House (now Provost Skene's House). It was a stay of less than a week as on the 23rd December 1873 she had gone "to Dundee".