LIKE mother, like daughter.

The prisoner was just 13 and had just started work as a maid in a house when she took to stealing.

The victim, Rebecca Bailey, was visiting her mother for a few days and at night it was her custom to hang her dress over a screen in the sitting room.

One morning, she thought her purse was light and opening it, discovered to her horror that £1 10s in gold and 3s 6d in silver were missing.

Suspicion immediately fell on the girl, Helen Foyle, who would have been the only person to have entered the room before Ms Bailey or her mother had got up.

Foyle initially denied any knowledge of the loss on being confronted but then admitted she had taken £3 and if Ms Bailey were to accompany her back home, she would return the other money.

No sooner had the victim left the room than the girl opened a window and leapt seven feet out of it to run back to an almshouse in Northam Road, Southampton.

Ms Bailey and a police officer found the pair there and the youth’s mother returned the £3.

On the way to the station, the girl began crying, saying she had taken the money to take things out of “pledge” which her mother had been forced to pawn.

Foyle appeared in court in late 1865 and pleaded guilty to theft, though her attitude had considerably changed and she appeared totally unconcerned about her dishonesty and fate.

The chief magistrate considered the way she had behaved reflected how she had been brought up and her mother was as bad as her. But mercy was not on his agenda that day and she needed “a severe punishment” by way of three months imprisonment with hard labour.