"the *pectator," august 24th, 1850
THE GAOL AND THE SCHOOL
" A VERY wicked boy indeed, and gives us more trouble than any other boy in the prison," said the keeper of Liverpool Gaol to the commissioner of the Morning Chronicle, speaking of a little child eight or nine years old ; whose wickedness seemed to consist in the irrepressible desire to play and to provoke other boys by sportive enticements. To see such a child in gaol is a burlesque on " justice "—the boy ought to have been sent home to his father.
But the father is " a vicious man," who has trained this and two other sons in habits of stealing. One of these boys had been thus taught by the father, and then imprisoned by the authorities, and whipped ; so that on every side he was beset by enemies! Surely both parents and authorities more deserved punishment than the little victim of their conflicting influences.
The Lord Chancellor has the power of assigning the persons of all children convicted of felony to the custody of any persons who are willing to take charge of them ; and, at the suggestion of Mr. Rushton, the Town-Council of Liverpool is about to invoke that authority in favour of juvenile offenders, in order to their lodgement in a reformatory school. An excellent plan.
Still, the qualification for admission to the Reformatory will be the commission of some crime ; there is nothing to protect children from the misteaching of parents. It is evident that the State does not provide any sufficient protection for that helpless class, not only against misteaching, but also against more direct outrages. How continually do we read of children made the instruments of parental depravity, or the victims of parental ferocity ; sometimes murdered for burial-fees, some- times scourged in savage exaggeration of Solomon's precept, " Spare the rod and spoil the child."
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