A serial thief who had previously forced young children to shoplift to help fund her drug habit has been jailed for 18 months after she admitted attacking and robbing a pensioner in the centre of Perth.
Jessie Hendry snatched the 65-year-old woman’s handbag during a heated altercation on South Street.
Her victim was left shaken and bruised after the incident in November last year.
Hendry, 33, appeared from custody at Perth Sheriff Court and admitted assaulting and robbing the woman, before making off with her bag and its contents.
The court was told that the next thing Hendry remembered was being woken up by police.
“This isn’t my handbag,” she told them.
Defence solicitor John McLaughlin said the pensioner had approached Hendry in the street and accused her of stealing her purse.
An argument erupted and at one point both women shouted to passers-by to call the police.
“But Ms Hendry accepts that she pulled the bag and walked away,” the solicitor told the court.
“Having done that and crossed the road, still holding the bag, it was, effectively, a robbery.”
The older woman later told police she was left in pain and had difficulty sleeping afterwards.
“There is no alternative here to a custodial period,” Sheriff Fiona Tait told Hendry.
In 2012, Hendry was banned from every shop in Perth after she admitted using two young children to steal DVDs from a shopping centre so she could sell them on to pay for her drug habit. She was branded a “modern day Fagin” and jailed for seven and a half months.
A year earlier, she was caught trying to take copper piping, which had been stolen from a DIY store, and was jailed for four months.
In 2010, she was sentenced to six months in prison for stealing clothing and other items from Next and Marks and Spencer stores in Perth.
The new offence was the latest to be added to a seven-page criminal record, which contains more than 30 crimes of dishonesty.