The Ballad of Sophia Constable

Constable was imprisoned at HM Prison Northallerton for three weeks' hard labour in 1873 – its youngest female prisoner – for stealing a loaf of bread worth three pence from a shop in Whitby. The alleged offence took place on 12 October 1872, and the loaf belonged to Thomas Macintosh. The case was dealt with at the North Riding Quarter Sessions in Northallerton on 31 December 1872, when Constable and Fanny Goodchild, a single woman aged twenty, were found guilty of obtaining the loaf under false pretences after both had pleaded guilty. Goodchild was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. Constable received three weeks' imprisonment, to be followed by four years in a Reformatory. One…