THE announcement that tougher sentencing powers for judges and magistrates could be introduced following draft guidelines from the Sentencing Council has an echo in pleas made in Gwent for sterner punishments almost 150 years ago.

The maximum sentence for assaults on emergency workers was increased to 12 months effective from July 1.

Editorial in The Star of Gwent in 1877 was highly critical of courts for sentencing of violent crimes often branded as derisory and absurd.

In a get-tough call, the editor declared: “There is an extraordinary want of uniform severity displayed by magistrates when dealing with punishment for crimes of brutal violence. The consequences are that criminals are too often given ludicrously inadequate penalties for atrocious acts.

“There is but one way to deal effectively and that is to inflict physical pain as a deterrent.”

In a forthright and uncompromising plea he added: “The lash is not yet obsolete and we do not desire that it should be until the instincts of these brutes are also obsolete.”

A century earlier whipping was often used as a deterrent to prison and not confined to men.

In 1785 Ann Rogers was whipped in public for stealing six pence. Hannah Young, who stole a hat, and Rachel Arthur, who stole four yards of linen worth ten shillings, were both stripped to the waist and whipped in public.

Prison was a grim place where offenders underwent a harsh programme of punishment accompanied by a restricted diet of oatmeal porridge, milk and bread, with small portions of meat twice a week. A visiting surgeon at Monmouth Jail claimed that a lack of meat and vegetables made prisoners unable to resist disease.

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The authorities however disagreed with medical opinion and said quite clearly that as oatmeal porridge was provided in all military prisons this was sufficient and good enough.

One court was censured for indifference when, incredibly, four men who had assaulted two policemen were spared punishment if they signed an apology.

Perhaps Pontypool justices may be forgiven for taking a realistic approach when an itinerant street seller was charged with being drunk and disorderly and resisting arrest.

A reporter from The Monmouthshire Merlin recorded that the man told the bench he had a glass or two too much while celebrating his birthday.

As for resisting arrest, he could not make out how he could do that since they were a set of gentlemen for which he had the greatest respect.

“If the bench will forgive me I will leave town at once” he said. And on that promise he was discharged.

At Caerleon Petty Sessions a man charged with assaulting a worker at the Cwmbran Forge, which today would be designated a high risk area, was jailed for 21 days.

As an alternative to prison, the ducking stool, although not widely used, was mainly applied to women, but sometimes, with the not so subtle implication, for men “who beat their wives unduly”.

History was to repeat itself in Gwent in 1984 when courts faced a charge that they were being too lenient. Gwent appeared in the top five black spots for crime density yet consistently sent fewer offenders to prison than any other county in the UK.

Gwent county councillors wrote to the Lord Chancellor complaining of double standards. They described the treatment of miners as harsh compared with the leniency shown to protesting farmers, and cited the fine of £1,000 for Arthur Scargill during the miners’ strike and the conditional discharge given to farmers who dumped cows’ heads outside the Welsh Office and filled a key hole with cement.

More local criticism came from Judge Charles Pitchford, who scorned the leniency given to thugs who attacked innocent bus passengers. In jailing a lad for 30 days’ youth custody for assault when a second person involved was fined £70 he described the sentence as “disgraceful”.

To reinforce the point he added: “When a person acts in a thuggish way on public transport then imprisonment must follow”.

In the face of repeated attacks on their judgment, it is not surprising that Gwent magistrates mounted a spirited defence of their decisions and announced measures designed to counter public opinion.

The South Wales Argus reported that justices were "toughening up” their sentencing patterns after years of being branded “softies”.

Currently more than 4,240 offences against emergency workers were recorded in Wales between April 2019 and Nov 2020. This represents an increase from an average of 202 a month in 2019 to 222 a month in 2020.

Among recent cases was that of a Newport woman who was sent to prison after spitting at a custody officer.

Any attack on a person providing a public service, especially police, prison officers, hospital staff, ambulance crews or fire officers can expect to attract increased penalties.

At the present time we can be assured that courts throughout the county will apply the law accordingly perhaps bearing in mind W S Gilberts’s plea: “My object all sublime, I shall achieve in time, To make the punishment fit the crime, The punishment fit the crime”.