(1862 – 1932)
We would probably not be aware of the year Sophie was born if it wasn’t for the fact she was an eleven-year-old girl when she was sent to Northallerton Prison in 1873, making her the youngest female ever to be incarcerated in the prison. Sentenced to three weeks hard labour for stealing a loaf of bed from a shop in Whitby, her defence of only stealing the threepenny loaf of bread because she was hungry just didn’t cut it. Following her sentence Sophie the next four years at a reformatory school.
Entitled The Ballad of Sophie Constable, it was unveiled 150 years after her sentence, and has these words at its base:
A life without choice, a future restricted
but all the same found guilty – convicted.
Guilty of stealing by ‘devious deception’
and the law to be followed without exception.
Sophia and her mild transgression,
Sophia Constable, aged eleven.
It wasn’t all bad – the wall Sophia faces states that she went on to work as a nurse, marry, have children and lived her life to the age of 70.
Northallerton Prison closed in 2013, and Sophie’s statue now stands close to where the women’s wing of the prison was situated.
WomenstatuesUK 