Helen Bremner - "The prisoner was not, to all appearances, the worse of drink when she sold me the sheet, but she looked a little stupid".

The sentence of seven years penal servitude that was handed to Helen Bremner on 20th April 1869 at the Inverness Circuit Court appears incredibly harsh for stealing a sheet from a clothes line. However, the judicial system of the time took a very dim view of habitual criminals, something which the presiding judge, Lord Jerviswoode, reflected on in his closing remarks as reported in the Elgin Courant and Morayshire Advertiser of the 23rd April 1869:

"It is a distressing case to see a person of your years at the bar on such a charge. I am afraid, looking at your past history, which has certainly been anything but satisfactory, penal servitude is the least we can give. It is no doubt a serious thing to impose another sentence of penal servitude on a person of your years, but the punishment has two objects. The first object is to deter others from committing such offences, and the second is to prevent you, should you see the period of sentence expire - which we can hardly expect, however, it will do - from stealing again".

 A native of Forres, Helen Bremner had four previous convictions for theft between 1857 and 1860, three of which had been dealt with by Elgin Sheriff Court and the fourth by the High Court in Inverness. When she appeared before the court in 1869 her defence was simply that she was drunk when the crime was committed and could not remember anything about the evening  in question. While a couple of witnesses confirm that she had indeed bought whisky on the 30th October 1868, the evidence of Christina Mackenzie proved conclusive: she confirmed that she had bought a (slightly damp) sheet from Helen Bremner for a shilling that evening, and while she may have "looked a little stupid", Bremner had not been drunk.

Following her discharge in December 1873, aged 58, Helen Bremner lived at 9 Princes Street, Aberdeen, for around three months. Why she chose to come to Aberdeen after her release from prison is not known, although it is quite possible that she had family connections in the city.

The Post Office Directory for Aberdeen covering 1873-74 suggests that Princes Street, which runs parallel to Frederick Street, joining King Street and Park Street, was a fairly diverse neighbourhood. A tobacconist, A. Ruddiman, ran a business from the same address that Helen Bremner lived at, so she may well have had lodgings above or adjacent to the shop. Other businesses on the street included a stabler, a leather merchant, a builder, a music teacher and a shoemaker.

Map Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

Plan of the City of Aberdeen Corrected to 1871

Keith & Gibb, 1871

https://maps.nls.uk/index.html