Scarborough woman caught with large carving knife at train station spared jail
A church-going Scarborough woman who was caught carrying a large carving knife at the town’s railway station has been spared prison despite it being her fourth conviction for carrying a blade.
Mary Dixon, 32, had secreted the “wicked weapon”, which had a 19cm blade, under her arm inside her jacket, York Crown Court heard.
A male acquaintance who was with her at the station called police after she showed him the knife, said prosecutor Amelia Taylor.
Two officers arrived shortly afterwards to arrest Dixon who had over 50 previous offences on her record including violence, harassment and making threats to kill.
Ms Taylor said it was about 3.25pm on Saturday, June 13, when police received a report about a woman with a large knife at Scarborough Railway Station.
A police inspector and a sergeant arrived at the scene shortly afterwards and took hold of Dixon’s wrists as a precaution.
When they asked her if she had a knife, she said there was a blade “under her arm, inside her jacket”.
The police inspector found a large, brown-handled carving knife in the side of her jacket which fell to the ground. The weapon was seized and Dixon was arrested.
Dixon, of Sepulchre Street, Scarbrough, was charged with possessing a knife in a public place and admitted the offence.
She appeared for sentence at the Crown Court on Tuesday (August 18).
Prosecuting barrister Ms Taylor outlined Dixon’s record which included 25 previous convictions for 51 offences dating back to 2013.
These included violence, seven previous convictions for damaging property, six for harassment, 12 for breaching restraining orders, making threats to kill and assaulting an emergency worker.
Her three previous convictions for carrying a knife were in 2015, 2016 and in 2025 when she was found carrying three razor blades on Valley Road in Scarborough.
As recently as March 2023, she received a three-year jail sentence for making threats to kill a woman and breaching a restraining order.
A pre-sentence probation report recommended that Dixon be jailed for the knife offence in Scarborough because they couldn’t work with her in the community, she disobeyed court orders, would not accept rehabilitation and previous prison sentences showed that jail “didn’t really hold any fear” for Dixon.
She presented a “high risk” to members of the public and also had a “history of making threats to harm children of her (past) victims”.
The report also noted that Dixon didn’t understand the severity of the offence, nor did she have any remorse.
They described her past compliance with court orders as “poor” and said that she had refused to engage with mental-health services in the past, therefore there was “no realistic prospect of rehabilitation to reduce the risk of harm she poses or the risk of further offending”.
Defence barrister Holly Clegg said that at the time of the incident at the railway station, Dixon was living in a property in Scarborough which had restrictions on tenants with mental-health issues having “sharp objects”.
She said that Dixon had been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and an emotionally unstable personality disorder in the past.
She added that Dixon had the support of her parents and went to church every Sunday. She had also been “ringing her priest for support”.
Dixon now had a job as a housekeeper at a hotel in Scarborough and was helping her mother look after her disabled father.
Judge Simon Hickey told Dixon: “The knife was a wicked weapon with a 19cm blade. If you have got an unstable personality disorder and anxiety, and if you’ve got a knife under your arm in a jacket in the railway station, who knows…(if) you can’t just whip it out and kill somebody.”
He described the probation report as “worrying” and noted that “prison doesn’t really hold any fears for you”.
However, the judge said it appeared that Dixon was now trying to turn her life around after securing a job and finding stable accommodation.
He said for those reasons he could take the exceptional course of suspending the inevitable jail sentence.
Dixon was given a six-month prison sentence, but this was suspended for 18 months, with no ancillary orders.
The judge said he had considered giving her unpaid work, but he would rather she focused on holding down her hotel job and “staying on the right side of the law”.