Mary Jane Thomson was a brass picker who used to live at Dixon’s Rows, Blantyre.

In the middle of March 1907, she found herself in Hamilton Sheriff Court, charged with stealing a pair of ladies shoes from the Stonefield Masonic Hall. Her excuse was that on 1st March that year, when she attended a dance at that hall, she was ‘ashamed’ of her own shoes and seeing some nice shoes lying in one of the empty dressing rooms, she had put them on and they were a ‘good fit’. Mary explained she intended to return them to the dressing room once the dance was over.

There was next some amusement in the courtroom as the Fiscal explained that this seemingly inadequate story wasn’t going to “cut it with the judges” for she had left the dance and went home wearing them. Indeed, she had come back to the hall, the following week wearing the same shoes for another dance, and it was only at that time that somebody noticed and she was caught out.

Mary was put on probation for 4 months and it is understood she received some sort of fine.