The train-wrecking epidemic has entered on a new phase. A
boy of twelve was sentenced at Tonbridge on Tuesday to receive twelve strokes with the birch-rod for placing a bar of iron on the rails at Edenbridge, "to see if it would throw the train off." At Birmingham on the same day two boys of nine and twelve were charged with placing an iron chair weighing 42 lb., a wheelbarrow, and a piece of railway-waggon on the main line to London; while at
Worksop three boys of eight, ten, and thirteen were captured after placing a heap of stones on the metals between Boughton and °Heston, with the result that the driver of a passenger train was thrown from his engine on to the embankment. Here, also, recourse has been had to the birch. Some slight consolation may be derived from the discovery that the danger to the public has been traced in these cases to childish thoughtlessness or curiosity rather than to deliberate vindictiveness on the part of adults. But the outlook is not reassuring when three in- stances of this formidable sort of mischief-making are reported on the same day from three parts of the country. In the case at Birmingham, it appeared that the children had been out all night. It has been suggested elsewhere, and, we think, with good reason, that the right persons to punish are not the juvenile culprits, but the parents who allow them to get out of control.
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