Mob rulers need to get a life

A MEDIEVAL style of unpleasant rough justice is raging through our society.

It's all too easy to whip up the common man and woman into a frenzy of self-righteous zeal. The clamouring crowds outside the police station where freed paedophile Sidney Cooke was believed to be holed-up were an unpleasant throwback to the vigilante torchlit processions of yesteryear. These are the folk who would have burned witches.

Now Mary Bell and her teenage daughter have been driven from their home after it was besieged by the press. Bell was ten when she strangled the first child. Her upbringing seems to have been harsh and perverse. There is no redemption for Myra Hindley, but Bell is different. She has served her sentence and, if there was no public gluttony for steamy and murderous revelations, they would have no market value.

Those ludicrously keeping their children out of school because Cooke is believed to be somewhere in their area, or demonstrating in Newcastle against the Bell book, should find something else to occupy them.

Cooke, revolting and disgusting though he is, has turned 70. He's bound to have slowed down considerably. And Bell the adult may scarcely believe what Bell the child did. Jenny Loweth

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.