From the Belfast Commercial Chronicle, 19 February 1806:

“At an adjournment of the quarter sessions of Kilmainham, held on Friday, Mrs Bryan, from the Rock, prosecuted a boy under ten years of age, exhibiting all the miseries which an apparent good appetite, without the means of gratifying it, could portray, for stealing a loaf of bread, valued five-pence. 

The boy’s mother, who was a widow, with six fatherless children, was adduced in proof of his age, after Mr McNally, who, with all the barristers present, had volunteered their services in the young culprit’s defence, had laid down the law, which was not controverted; that boys or girls under the age of ten years were considered infants; and that apples and bread were laid as incentives, of which no clandestine conveyance by infants could be considered felonious. 

The Chairman endeavoured to mask his constitutional good nature while admonishing the boy, whom he ordered to the discipline of his mother, with such solemn stipulations as authorized him to say that he should be fundamentally reclaimed.  The tremulous mother thanked ‘his holiness,’ and promised that on the conditions laid down, she would become her son’s executioner.  Adjourned.”

Despite the beauty of its buildings, Dublin poverty featured heavily in criminal proceedings even before the Famine. Hopefully one of the barristers in court took it on themselves to give the young thief and his siblings a square meal…