JUVENILE CRIMINALS.
LT0 THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The writer of the review on Major Griffiths' work on prison life, in the Spectator of December 9th, is apparently not aware of the passing of the Reformatory Schools Act, 1893. By that Act, the necessity of sending a child to prison, either on remand or as a preliminary to detention in a reformatory, is avoided. The workhouse authorities in this city have kindly consented to receive all children pending the necessary inquiries; and since the Act came into operation, I have sent no child to prison, either on remand or after com- mittal to a reformatory. This alteration is one I have long advocated, and which I consider most beneficial.
You may be the more willing to insert this letter as it will serve to show that even a stipendiary Magistrate, who, according to your correspondent, Mr. Francis Darwin, is "autocratic and unsympathetic, and whose mind becomes almost poisoned by criminal surroundings," has still enough of sympathy left to welcome and take advantage of every means which the law affords him for the better reformation
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