Captured: Portraits of Crime 1870-1930 - Flipbook - Page 99
1919
L O N G B AY
GAO L
FROM CRIME
T O D I VO R C E
Wa l t e r M a n s f i e l d
AT T E M P T E D B R E A K , E N T E R A N D S T E A L
Walter Mansfield, a 16 year old carter from Sydney, was photographed at the State
Penitentiary, Long Bay on 2 December 1919 while serving a sentence of twelve months
hard labour for attempting to break and enter a shop with intent to steal.
Mansfield and his accomplice, fellow carter Mortimer Nicholls, pleaded guilty
to the attempted break, enter and steal charge at Sydney Quarter Sessions on
1 December, and were sentenced by Judge Cohen. This was not Mansfield’s first
criminal conviction. As a 12 year old, he had been convicted through the Children’s
Court for stealing and had been committed to Mittagong Farm Home for Boys in
September 1915.
The Mittagong Farm Home for Boys was established in the NSW Southern
Highlands under the provisions of the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders
Act 1905. It was a government-run Probationary Training Home for boys aged 8 to 17
who had been convicted in the Children’s Courts for offences such as truanting,
being uncontrollable or neglected, breaching probation, stealing, and breaking and
entering.
The information that accompanies Mansfield’s 1919 gaol photographic portrait
notes that he ‘has an impediment in his speech’. Whether this condition affected
Mansfield’s childhood or his ability to communicate, or was symptomatic of an
underlying impairment or developmental condition, and what, if any impact this may
have had on his behaviour, can only be speculated. What is known, however, is that
Mansfield became a habitual criminal. Records show that he was repeatedly
incarcerated in the State Penitentiary over many years, serving sentences for
vagrancy, stealing, larceny and pistol licencing offences.
Records show that in 1923 Harold W. Mansfield married Lillian E. Smith of
Randwick. In 1928, Lillian petitioned for divorce from Mansfield on the grounds that
during their five-year marriage he had undergone frequent convictions for crime and
had served numerous sentences. He had also regularly left her without means of
support.
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