Monday, October 22, 2007

Woman spent 70 years incarcerated for stealing 25 cents

This has got to be the most depressing news story ever!

A British woman who spent 70 years incarcerated for stealing about 25 cents -- crime she didn't commit -- died shortly after a tearful reunion with her family.

Jean Gambell was falsely accused of stealing the equivalent of about 25 cents in 1937 and was declared a “feeble-minded person” under England's 1890 Lunacy Act, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

Although the missing money was later found, Gambell, who was 15 at the time of her incarceration, was shuffled between mental institutions for nearly three quarters of a century.

The woman's brother, David Gambell, said he stumbled by chance upon evidence that his sister was alive and tracked her to a care home in Macclesfield, England.
Hot Air called it, "The story Kafka never got to write"