OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES, one of Wisbech's most ardent campaigners has been Victoria Gillick. Here is PART TWO of her report on the effects of immigration on Wisbech.
I make no claim over the accuracy of the statistics, and I neither endorse or refute her personal conclusions. The report is long and detailed, so it will be published in sections over the next week or so. I have put statistical information in blue font. The remainder are Mrs Gillick's own views. YOUR VIEWS ARE WELCOME, both for and against, and you can make them known via the contact form at the bottom of the blog, or via Twitter - https://twitter.com/wisbechevenmore

                                                                 The Council's Strategy (2007-10)
 

Fenland District Council sprang into action the following year.....though not, alas, on behalf of local people. The sole purpose of the council's 'Migrant Population Strategy⁷ was to give all possible aid and succour to the foreign incomers. Their every need and every difficulty was considered in detail, the Council appearing to regard them as a small downtrodden minority, cruelly coerced here against their collective will. Thus migrant problems with housing and employment, welfare benefits and entitlements were agonised over, as also their need for interpreters, further education, skills training and qualification recognition, together with suggestions for their sport, art and leisure pursuits.  Even the migrants' apparent lack of family planning and sexual & mental healthcare were deemed worthy of conciliar scrutiny. Get everything really right for the foreign workers, avowed the caring Council, and '...multicultural community cohesion...' would assuredly follow. 

In pursuit of this happy daydream, Council officials began at once to organise a grand assembly of  45 organisations, the Diverse Communities Forum,⁸ to carry out research, produce leaflets and devise action plans. Verily, it was a bureaucratic heaven in the making. Here are just some of them:

Cambridgeshire Human Rights & Race Equality Support Service - Patient Advice & Liaison Service - Care Network - Drink Sense - Dial Drug - Strategic Migration Partnership - County Gypsy Traveller Manager - Migration Population Customer Advisers - The Ferry Project - Fenland Volunteer Centre - Citizens Advice Bureau - Job Centre Plus - Oasis Centre - Ormiston Trust - One Voice4 Travellers - Peterborough Race Equality Council - Richmond Fellowship - Roddons Housing - Rosmini Centre - Advice for Life - Mobile Europeans Taking Action - Fenland Travellers Forum - Learning & Skills Council - King's Lynn Area Resettlement Service - Fenland Play Strategy - CP Learning Trust - Single Information Portal Project - Adult Community Learning Fund - Keystone Development Trust - East of England Development Agency  etc etc etc..........                                                                                                                                 

                                       Government has spoken
 

Rack their brains as they might, local people would be unable to recall a comparable Council strategy ever having been devoted to their kith and kin, even though Fenland has been disadvantaged for decades, its uncomplaining inhabitants enduring the lowest wages and poorest housing, the worst health and most inadequate education in the entirety of East Anglia.                                                         

However, had local people ever actually seen the Migrant Population Strategy they would have realised at once why Fenland Council was so keen to assist the new foreign workforce rather than the indigenous one. Put simply, it was merely following the Labour Government's diktat, spelt out two years earlier by Immigration Minister, Des Browne, and quoted approvingly by the Tory-led Council in its Migrant Strategy:

"We are not and cannot be 'fortress Britain' if our businesses are to grow and prosper and our economy to thrive. We are a stronger player in an increasingly international market place and....we are successfully attracting the workers that Britain needs."                                                           

                                                                                                               (Des Browne MP    Feb. 2005)

5.

                                           It's the economy stupid

The Immigration Minister's call for a migrant-fuelled economy was reiterated nineteen times in Fenland Council's Migrant Population Strategy.  The following five samples will suffice:

*  'Migrant workers....make a huge contribution to the rural economy, often filling posts where there is no suitable or insufficient local labour. Without this labour force many businesses would not be able to work at full capacity.'

*  'It is clear that local companies regard migrant workers as key components in their strategy for the current and future prosperity of the Fens.'

*  'Working with employers is a key for many reasons.....Many employers are keen to work with us as they see this as a means of helping their migrant workers, and will in turn help sustain their business.'

* 'Migrant workers bring £360m to the Region's economy. One in three are employed in food, agriculture, construction, hotels, catering, cleaning and manufacture, making them a highly significant element within Fenland's local economy.'                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

* 'The increasing dependence of Fenland employers on migrant labour and the continuing attractions of the Fens as a preferred destination for migrant workers, coupled with economic factors in EU accession countries, suggests that migrant labour is likely to remain an important feature of the Fenland labour force for the foreseeable  future.'

*************************************

Somewhere in the midst of all this eulogy to migrant labour, the Council did manage a brief note of concern for the dire situation it was creating for local people, devoting three whole lines to Fenland's "indigenous unskilled" school-leavers and their slim chance of ever finding employment.

But it was only crocodile tears. For the whole aim and purpose of the Council's migrant strategy was quite clearly to assist local businesses achieve a smooth cut-and-paste transition: replacing the local workforce with a settled, compliant, and far cheaper foreign one.  

                                TO BE CONTINUED                                                               

OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES, one of Wisbech's most ardent campaigners has been Victoria Gillick. She came to  nationwide attention when she challenged the rights of doctors to give confidential contraceptive advice to teenage girls without bringing parents into the loop.
She spoke at the controversial public meeting over immigration a couple of years ago. Now she has painstakingly compiled a report on how she sees immigration affecting Wisbech and the surrounding area. The information and statistics contained in the report are, she says, all via Freedom of Information requests. She has asked me to host the report on this blog, and I am happy to do so, but I make no claim over the accuracy of the statistics, and I neither endorse or refute her personal conclusions. The report is long and detailed, so it will be published in sections over the next week or so. I have put statistical information in blue font. The remainder are Mrs Gillick's own views. YOUR VIEWS ARE WELCOME, both for and against, and you can make them known via the contact form at the bottom of the blog, or via Twitter - https://twitter.com/wisbechevenmore

PART ONE OF THE FOILING CABINET REPORT

DATA ACQUIRED THROUGH
              FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUESTS                    

 What's going on in Fenland?

Impoverishment

Very flat, the Fens. Sea-bed flat in fact, being the drained and reclaimed marshland encircling the southern and eastern sides of the Wash. Transformed over the centuries into super-fertile farmland, the Fens stretch in a wide arc from the Norfolk port of King's Lynn, southwards to Cambridge, across to Peterborough and up to Boston in Lincolnshire. The district known as Fenland lies in the north-west corner of Cambridgeshire, abutting Norfolk and Lincolnshire and encompassing twenty-nine villages and the four market towns of Wisbech, March, Chatteris and Whittlesey.                                                                                                  

So much for the geography. This Bulletin, however, is about Fenland's history: its recent, troubling history, which truth to say, differs only in scale to what's been happening all over the country: Government engendered, business orientated, taxpayer funded impoverishment.

Fenland's troubles began, as so many untoward outcomes have begun, with the European Union   stipulating unfettered movement of peoples between Member States. Our government eagerly complied and our public authorities obligingly cooperated. At the receiving end.....Joe Public, ignored, neglected and vilified. We shall therefore start with a brief look at the impact on Fenland as a whole, followed by a more detailed scrutiny of one of its market towns: Wisbech.

      

                                       CONTENTS                                                     Page

                                       FENLAND

Demographic trends 1981-2001 ............................ 2

East European immigration ................................... 3

  'Migrant Population Strategy' 2007....................... 4/5

  'Migration Impacts Fund' ...................................... 5/6

The migrants' home countries ..............................  6

                                     

                                       WISBECH

Background ............................................................ 7

Population & age structure ..................................... 8

                                      Local  numbers ....................................................... 9

School population.................................................. 10

 Healthcare (GPs and Hospital) .............................. 11

Accommodation  ................................................... 12

Social Housing ...................................................... 12

Wages .................................................................... 13

Unemployment .....................................................  14

Alcohol .................................................................  15

Crime ....................................................................  16

                                      Costing the UK & the County ............................... 17

Costing the District ................................................ 18

Impoverishing Wisbech ..........................................19

                                      References

2.

FENLAND

Fenland grows and prepares food for the nation, its farms and food-processing factories always needing extra horny-handed workers during the hectic harvest months. Hiring additional seasonal labour, whether local people, students, traveller families or foreigners on work permits, has thus been part and parcel of Fenland's yearly cycle for generations.

Between 1981-2001 Fenland's indigenous population swelled by over sixteen thousand souls, rising from 67,175 to 83,549.¹  During those twenty years, however, the age structure in the area had seen a decline in the number of younger people, and a corresponding increase in older ones:

    1981-2001

*  Under-20s decreased ...... 28.0 - 24%

*  20-29s decreased.............12.4 - 10.3%

*  30-39s rose..................... 13.8 - 14.6% 

*  40-59s rose..................... 23.8  - 26.7%

*  Over-60s rose................. 22.0 - 24.5%,   
                                                          

DEMOGRAPHIC TRENDS

This demographic change was not unique to Fenland, but was part of a national trend consequent on low birth rates in the 1970s and '80s. To maintain stable population growth a country needs a birth rate of 2.1 children. The post-war baby-boom of 1946-47 had a rate of around 2.4 children which led to another, smaller, baby-bulge twenty years later. Parliament, persuaded by birth control lobbyists that Britain was on the brink of a catastrophic population explosion, sought to head-off the disaster by legalising abortion in 1967 and making contraception available on the NHS  in 1973. The upshot was a mega Baby-Bust as annual birth rates plummeted to 1.7 children, the lowest level ever recorded in Britain.²  By 1984 the number of children aged 0-15 was almost two million fewer than in 1971, resulting in thousands of school closures during the following decade.

In 1988 government advisers alerted the business world to the stark fact that by 1995 the number of 18-21 year-olds would have fallen by 1.2 million.³ Most employers nevertheless ignored the warnings, preferring instead to blame their labour problems on young people themselves, publicly lambasting "the youth of today" as lazy, incompetent, work-shy slackers.  How stupid is that?

As ever, the Government then made matters worse by scrapping Student Maintenance Grants, traditionally topped-up by holiday and weekend jobs, in favour of bank-run Loan Schemes. Thereafter most students chose simply to ratchet-up their huge bank debt all year round.

By the turn of the Millennium there was indeed a dramatic fall in 15-29 year-olds, with Fenland  suffering a drop of almost 1,800 in this critical age group. The labour shortage did have one beneficial effect however, for it obliged notoriously tight-fisted Fen farmers and factory bosses to pay their workforce a decent living wage for a change: more than double the Minimum Wage.

Then out of the blue, early in the new Century, something unprecedented happened in Fenland.

It all began in 2002 when Brussels granted EU membership to eight East European nations. Most of the other big beasts in Europe (Germany, France, Spain, Italy) put a 7-year block on migrants from Eastern Europe pouring across their borders in search of jobs and homes. But British industry, being ever mindful that cheap immigrant labour was the quick way to easy profits, couldn't wait to have them here, and persuaded the Government to post a more or less open invitation to the new Member States, saying in effect: "Come one, come all.....our economy needs YOU!"                                                         

The entreaty was all but irresistible, thanks to a previous ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, which in 1985 declared that anyone entitled to live in another country was also entitled to bring every other member of their extended family with them.

3.

 

MASS MIGRATION

                                                                                                                                                                                                   

The outcome was predictable; nay, it was intentional. By 2003 thousands of Portuguese families suddenly began arriving in Britain, emigrating here because (they said) they had been ousted from their agricultural jobs back home by a sudden incoming wave of Polish workers. Very soon, however, the Polish tide changed direction and began sweeping over Britain instead, inundating Fenland farms and factories in particular. Following fast in its wake came an even bigger tsunami of Lithuanians, Latvians and ethnic Russians. At least a million were in the UK by 2006. Nor were these newcomers arriving only as temporary seasonal workers. A large and growing proportion intended to settle here......permanently. 

Fen farmers and factory bosses were ecstatic. Landlords and gangmasters couldn't believe their luck. Mini-wages were back again for everyone......plus multi-lets at maxi-rents for the foreigners.  Lovely big bucks and loud hoorahs all round.

Only one nasty fly in the ointment: the hefty government increases in Fenland's Business Rates, which have risen 63% in the last ten years, from around £14 million to almost £23 million by 2013.  

                                                                                                                                                                        

INVISIBLE IMMIGRANTS

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) hasn't a clue how many people are living in the UK nowadays. Its 2011 Census recorded over one million residents were from Eastern Europe, but in April 2014 it finally admitted to underestimating their numbers by a massive 350,000.⁴ 

Meanwhile the Census for Fenland had the population increasing to 95,262, of which a mere 4,439  were East European nationals, including 665 migrant children and pensioners. This hopelessly inaccurate head count also occurred in the two migrant-heavy districts of Lincolnshire, with Boston said to have only 6,839 East Europeans, and Spalding just 5,241.⁵

In short, most of the East European workers had simply ignored the Census altogether. The trouble was, these wholly erroneous ONS statistics are still being used by Cambridgeshire officials to formulate all their policies and funding for Fenland. [See Page 8: 'Uncounted migrants']

                                                                                                                        

COMMUNITIES BALKANISED

Generally speaking, when immigrants are relatively few in number they will make an effort to blend into the landscape by adopting the language and culture of the host community. But East Europeans in Fenland were legion and increasing year on year, and consequently felt neither the need nor the desire to speak English and integrate. Being employed en masse in fields and factories, and then lodged together in shared houses, each different Teutonic/Slavic nationality sticking closely with its own, served to Balkanise the newcomers still more. Before long the Poles and Lithuanians had established numerous cafés, shops and supermarkets in Fenland, employing their own people to sell their own imported food in their own language. The Polish migrants were further segregated by being granted separate church services, conducted by their own priests in their own native tongue. Meanwhile Lithuanians acquired a couple of Wisbech pubs, one of whose licensees was ordered by the police to remove a somewhat hostile notice from its windows: 'No British here'.

By 2006 the strain of living among so many uncommunicative foreigners was beginning to tell on the Fenland populace, particularly in Wisbech where most of the food processing and packaging industries were based, and three-quarters of the migrants were living.⁶ Here, not only were local workplaces becoming filled with East Europeans, but whole neighbourhoods as well. 

Something had to be done. But what, and how.....and by whom?

4.

TO BE CONTINUED

PICKWICK'S GUIDE TO POLITICAL SPEAK

After a succession of posts about dark deeds from our shared Wisbech past, I am reminded that Pickwick has neglected one vital part of our Shared Agenda/Prospectus/Vision Statement/ Policy Guidelines (substitute any piece of modern management bullshit with which you are most comfortable) So, with a General Election - if not exactly looming - a flicker on the horizon, this post is by way of a public service broadcast. You will hear many of this phrases over the next six months, and you may need this essential cut-out-and-keep guide as a translation aid. This installment is free, but future issues will be competitively priced at £7.99, payable to Pickwick's offshore ethical investment account.

After a long and thorough consultation… - "My cabinet colleague has come up with a great idea…"
Community cohesion - what happens when migrants are allowed to burn the British flag and other national symbols, and then play the race card when challenged.
Fall for - what ordinary people do when they vote for an idea or policy not approved of by the mainstream parties.
Immigration - something which is great for businessmen, farmers and crooked landlords.
Foreign Aid - a system whereby working people in one country subsidise palaces, executive motor cars and space programmes in another country
Free speech - a state of affairs when certain people in the community can advocate beheading their opponents, and someone who opposes that idea is arrested for 'hate crime'
I hear what you are saying - "Your opinion is worth jack **** to me."
Laughter - what politicians resort to when their logical arguments fall on deaf ears, as in 'Still Laughing at UKIP'.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear - "I'm not answering your question, but I'm going to spin all around the houses with a load of gobbledygook."
Local elections - a process whereby a minority of people in a city, village or urban area decide who will run their affairs of the whole community for the next four years.
People in my community are genuinely feeling the pinch - "I have an all expenses paid flat in Islington, a family home in the Cotswolds, and a villa in Tuscany."
Political Party - a club where the members have to agree with every decision it makes, no matter how stupid or ruinous to the common good.
Populism - something that ordinary people believe is important, but which mainstream politicians think is bad for us - and them.

Postal voting poses certain challenges - "Strewth, the local Labour party has bought all the Asian votes again!"
Socialism - a form of government which takes money out of your pocket, and puts it into the pocket of someone who is either lazy, inept or criminal.
The electorate are vital stakeholders in our shared future - "Phew! Back in power for another four years! Take the 'phone off the hook, Miranda."
The exploitation of migrant labour is repellent - "Have you collected the rent from the Filipino nanny yet, Giles?"
The NHS is the jewel in our crown - "Anyone know where the nearest pawnbroker is…?"
The xxxx candidate conducted a fair and honourable campaign - "LMAO - the xxxx candidate only got 54 votes!"
We must work together, across party lines, for the good of the village/town/city/country - "I'm going to take the mickey out of my political opponents at every opportunity, and belittle them as much as possible."
We're listening to parents - We are telling parents to make trouble for those Lefty idiots, the teachers.
We must resist the inflationary pressure on wages - "That's a 10% pay rise for us MPs, then!"
We will not let this matter rest - "When the media have got tired of this story, we'll just carry on, same-old, same-old."

THE FIVE LITTLE MARTYRS (conclusion)

The story so far. "SCHOOLBOY GANGSTERS ROUNDED UP!"  screamed the local papers. According to Dr Meacock, who chaired the Special Children's Court, the boys,

 "constituted a centre of vice in the town,
and they must be dealt with drastically."

Those of you who follow this blog will remember that Dr Meacock was at the very heart of the controversy surrounding the life and death of Dr Horace Dimock, twenty years earlier, an unfortnate situation which resulted in the infamous riots. So, who were these five desperados, and what were the Industrial Schools to which they were to be packed off, until they reached the age of 16?

Firstly the names of the boys. I received this information from the County Record Office. I imagine they are all now deceased, but at the time their names would not have been available in the press, for legal reasons. They were:

Horace Stephen Freear, age 7
Frederick Hunt, age 8
Stanley Johnson, age 9
Harry Rivett, age 10
Harry Worth, age 10

Their sentence? To spend the years in an Industrial School, until they reached the age of 16. For Worth and Rivett - a 6 year sentence; for Johnson, 7 years; Hunt would serve 8 years, and Freear a staggering 9 years.

The words 'Industrial School' have a vaguely worthy ring to them. There's a suggestion that they were places where youngsters could learn a trade, benefit from a healthy lifestyle, and be taught the errors of whatever ways had led them to become inmates. Older readers will remember the words 'Reform School' and 'Borstal'. These days we skip around the  truth with phrases like 'Young Offenders Institution', but the fact remains that Industrial schools were usually grim places which probably served as training grounds for future lawbreakers. The industrial schools were invariably grim and forbidding places but it doesn't seem that one existed in Cambridgeshire, with the nearest one being in Suffolk.

To their eternal credit, there were those in Wisbech who thought the sentence handed down to these boys was excessive. To use modern parlance, they may well have been "thieving little scrotes", but even so, this was a draconian sentence, even by the standards of 1933. Spearheaded by a Baptist minister, the Reverend R N Armitage (pictured below), a fund was started to appeal the boys' sentence.

Then, the big guns turned on Dr Meacock and his fellow magistrates. The popular periodical, John Bull, said its piece.

After repeating the findings of the magistrates, the journal then let rip.

Early in the New Year of 1934, with the backing of the Isle of Ely Education Committee, a court declared that the sentences imposed on the lads were totally disproportionate. The Wisbech magistrates were humiliated, and costs were awarded against them. It was significant that no-one could explain why Dr Meacroft was even on the magistrates' bench in the first place.

So, what became of The Five Little Martyrs? The records tell us that a Horace Stephen Freear died in 1978, and that Frederick Hunt died in 1971. Of the others, no-one knows. If any readers have information about what these lads did with their lives once they were spared from years in an Industrial School, then Pickwick will be only too happy to publish it.

THE FIVE LITTLE MARTYRS (part one)

 

In the autumn of 1933, once again Wisbech made it into the national papers. In the same year as the double tragedy of Florence Reeve and her jealous husband shocked people across East Anglia (see the blog for 14 September 2014), a criminal case brought Wisbech into national focus. Here was the headline in the Wisbech Standard.

Let the report in the Wisbech Standard tell the tale of these ruthless gangsters and their reign of terror which had the honest Fenland folk cowering in their beds and in fear of their lives.

For five hours Dr H. C. Meacock (in the chair) and other magistrates sat, on Tuesday, at a special Wisbech Children's Court listening to the evidence in an amazing series of thefts extending over two months, committed by a gang of young Wisbech schoolboys, five of whom were eventually ordered to be sent to an industrial school.

Dr Meacock, I hear you ask. Doesn't he have previous? Wasn't he the man who, twenty years earlier, was most prominent in the sad case of Dr Dimock and The Wisbech Riots? He was, the very same. One of his fellow magistrates was a certain Mr Savory, seen here on the right of the good doctor.

The defendants were first charged with stealing a purse containing a ten shilling note and 2s 6d in silver from the dwelling house of Annie Ward, at Wisbech, on September 5th.

Annie Ward, of Little Church Street, Wisbech, stated that she left her house at 11.55 am to go to a nearby baker's establishment. When she returned five minutes later she found her purse missing from the mantelpiece.

Inspector Bush gave evidence of the enquiries he pursued after being informed of the loss, and read statements which he said were made by the defendants when he interviewed them.

The next charge was one of stealing a box of ante-serum for pigs and 5s worth of groceries, the property of Bert Clifton at Wisbech on September 1st.

Bert Clifton, a farmer, of Gedney, said that about 8 o'clock he left his motor car against the Canal railings near the Empire Theatre. In the car were some drums of ante-serum, which he valued at 22s 8d, and 5s worth of groceries. He was away from his car between 8pm and 10.45pm, and on leaving the Theatre he went direct to the car and did not miss the goods until he reached home.

Inspector Bush stated that on September 11th and on subsequent dates he interviewed defendants, one of whom he said took the groceries out of the car and handed them to another of the defendants, who threw them into the canal. Witness added that one of defendants' parents had rendered every assistance in trying to retrieve the goods from the canal (pictured below)

All the defendants pleaded guilty except one, whose father said that he was in the house at the time of the alleged crime.

The same boys were then charged with stealing a rib of beef and a carton of cream belonging to Susannah Winters, at Wisbech on the same date.

Susannah Winters said that she left her cycle in Clare's Passage at about 6-40pm. On the handlebars was a basket containing a joint of meat worth 2s 3d, and a carton of cream, which had disappeared when she returned to her cycle at 6.55. Inspector Bush spoke of interviewing defendants, one of whom said that one of the others took the meat home and had it cooked. This was denied by the parent. Mr A R Bennett, headmaster of the Queen's School and Mr A V Thompson, headmaster of St Peter's School were present when witness interviewed defendants.

Five of the boys were then charged with stealing cycle lamps at Wisbech on September 8th and 9th, the property of William Callaby, James John Harrop, Kate Rose, and another. Inspector Bush gave evidence in each case.

A charge of stealing two purses and 9d in money, the property of Ivy Irene Hurst, and another, at Wisbech on September 9th was brought against four of the boys. Ivy Irene Hurst said that she went to the Swimming Bath on the date in question, with a friend. After she had left the water, and dressed, she took her shopping bag, which contained her own handbag, inside which was her friends purse, and placed it in her friend's cubicle. A few minutes later they both went back to the cubicle and found that the purses had been taken from the bag. Witness valued the handbag at 7s 6d. Jean Parlett corroborated the previous witness's evidence. Inspector Bush said he interviewed defendants, who admitted being there.

Another summons was for stealing half a pound of butter, a box of Aspro tablets and two cycle spanners, at Wisbech on September 9th. Dolly Mary Willimott Barber stated that she left her cycle outside 6, The Crescent at about 6-15pm. On returning at 6-40pm, she found the articles were missing. In his evidence, Inspector Bush said he saw the defendants on September 10th, and one said that they had all shared "the white sweets, which did not taste nice."

Five of the boys were also charged with stealing a leather handbag containing 2s 7d in money, certain photographs, and one NP match-box, the property of Ivy may Hurst, at Wisbech, on September 1st. Ivy Hurst, of Broad Drove, South Brink, Wisbech, said that at about 9-15am she left her perambulator, in which was her handbag containing the articles, outside Dr Gunson's House. She visited Dr Gunson's surgery at 10-10, and when she came out at 11 o'clock the handbag was not there.

Inspector Bush said that when he interviewed defendants one of them said that a boy took the bag out of the perambulator and hid it under some stones near St Peter's School. All the boys admitted they were there when the theft was committed.

Two of the boys were finally charged with stealing 2s in silver and 4d in copper, the monies of Barbara Joyce Bush, at Wisbech, on September 9th. Barbara Joyce Bush, of the Police Station, Harecroft Road, Wisbech, stated that she left her cycle outside Peark's shop. On the handlebars was a basket, in which was a small bag containing the money. She was only in the shop about three minutes, but when she came out her bag was missing. Inspector Bush spoke of the previous witness reporting her loss to him, and the subsequent enquiries he made. One of the defendants admitted taking the money and sharing it one of the other boys. They bought some sweets with some of the money.

This hearing took place at Sessions House, a familiar Wisbech landmark.

                                             NEXT TIME .....

 The summing up and sentencing ...

The horrors of the Industrial Schools...
The town's response....

The five boys named for the first time ....