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by a tenth part of the sentence which would be inflicted if a man were the offender.
(b) Libel and Slander.
Cases are innumerable of men being sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for libel. No case is ever heard of a woman being similarly sentenced.
The following are typical cases:—
At the Essex Assizes, February 2nd, 1895, before Mr. Justice Mathew, Agnes Ellen Royce, a boardinghouse keeper, pleaded guilty to demanding £300 from Dr. Edwin Worts, of Colchester, by menaces and threats. Mr. Avory, on behalf of the prisoner, stated that the letters and telegram in which she threatened the doctor were written while she was in a hysterical condition, and he suggested that she should be bound over under the First Offenders Act. Mr. C. F. Gill, who prosecuted, said that the prisoner accused the doctor of having ruined her, and made many seroius allegations against him. No doubt she was labouring under very great excitement when she made these charges. She was discharged under the First Offenders Act.
"Catharine Matilda Gordon, forty-six, described as having no occupation, and living at Mardon's Croft, Moseley, near Birmingham, was charged on remand, before Mr. Newton, at Malborough Street Police Court, on Saturday, with unlawfully and maliciously publishing a defamatory libel concerning Mr. Thomas James Hooper, on March 27th last, at the Badminton Club, Piccadilly. The accused was not legally represented. The prosecutor is a solicitor, and acts as Clerk to the Justices of the Peace at Biggleswade. Mr. William Vyse, an independent gentleman and member of the Badminton Club, living at Wickham Road, Brockley, deposed that on or about the 27th of March last he received from prisoner the postcard produced. Mrs. Gordon: 'I wish very much to apologise publicly, and
