I'm sad to say that this is one of my RANNs. Edward RANN was a younger brother of my 2xgreat grandfather George RANN, so I guess that this poor lad was named after my ancestor. This report was made in January 1861. By the time of the census, a few months later George was resident in the workhouse and here he remained until his death from consumption on 13th June 1866. I'm sorry I can't report a happier ending. Thank you to Angela for finding this report for me - my text search for RANN had missed this one. I'm now trying to work out what happened to the other children from Edward's first marriage, because George had a number of surviving siblings. In the 1861 census Edward and Hannah are shown as living with 2 of George's younger siblings, Clement and Frank and Hannah and Edward's baby son, born just about a month after the reported case. There's no sign of another child as referred to in the report, so either they were confusing Clement or Frank as being her own child or another one has since died or something. I'll have to dig further. Of course there may have been other circumstances that we don't know about and probably never will. Kate in lovely sunny Devon, UK -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Peter & Angela McMurtry Sent: 08 May 2008 10:36 To: [email protected] Subject: [IoW] CRUELTY 1861 Makes you wonder where the husband was while all this was going on Angela Hannah RANN, a young married woman, and wife of Edward RANN, brewers labourer, of Carisbrooke, was charged with assaulting, ill treating, and neglecting a certain male child, aged 12 years. The son of her husbands former wife named George RANN. The evidence disclosed such a continued and systematic course of cruelty, the poor boy being worn down to a mere skeleton for want of food, his body covered with the marks of blows and bruises, that the Court committed her to take trial at the session. As an instance of her excessive punishment for a trifling offence, it was proved that on the Thursday preceding she kept him naked in a tub of cold water for a considerable time, with the temperature at 24c and until the neighbours released him by force. On the same day, when PC Lawlor paid a visit to his bedroom the poor child had only a wet sack to lie on the floor boards and a small piece of patchwork to cover him, whilst her own child was comfortably provided for, Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig. All mail scanned with AVAST 2008 No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced ************************************** You can contact the Isle of Wight List Administrator by emailing: [email protected] ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message