ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF BOSTON.
Sect. 1. The city of Boston hereby adopts the two hundred and ninety-fourth chapter of the laws of the commonwealth, for the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty, entitled “an act concerning truant children and absentees from school,” and avails itself of the provisions of the same.
Sect. 2. Any of the persons described in the first section of said act, upon conviction of any offence therein described, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding twenty dollars; and the senior justice, by appointment of the police court, shall have jurisdiction of the offences set forth in said act.
Sect. 3. The house for the employment and reformation of juvenile offenders, is hereby assigned and provided as the institution of instruction, house of reformation, or suitable situation, mentioned in the third section of said act.
We understand that this wholesome law was put in active operation at once in the city of Boston and in the adjoining town of Roxbury, and that a faithful execution of it bids fair to correct the hideous public nuisance of truant children. We wish it were practicable to secure similar legislation in our city. No indolent, thoughtless farmer ever stood on the borders of his field, and witnessed the broad-cast dispersion of Canada thistle-down over every part of it, with more composure than our lawmakers and magistracy look upon the spread of juvenile corruption in Philadelphia. We say this not without a grateful sense of the late liberality of the legislature in granting $60,000 towards the erection of a new Refuge in Philadelphia; nor without a just appreciation of the results of the labours of that excellent institution; nor without taking into view the various agencies designed to accomplish similar objects. But upon the mass of juvenile waywardness and depravity, they seem scarcely to have made a perceptible impression. The accumulation of the material out of which convicts are made is not sensibly checked. The sources of this corruption have been laid open to view in the reports of our Houses of Refuge, our Magdalen Asylums and police reports, but they remain as numerous and as prolific as ever. Corrupt places of amusement are thronged by boys and girls. Our eligible schools are open to them in vain. The hawking of newspapers, occasional jobs at the steamboat wharves or depots and chance-errands in the market-place, afford them means of vicious indulgence; and the regular service of an apprenticeship to some useful business, with the wholesome restraints which were formerly involved in this relation, are too irksome for their impatient spirits. Boys and girls of twelve or fifteen years of age, in a majority of cases, choose their own pursuits, receive the whole or a part of their earnings, to be expended at their pleasure; and with these elements of independence it is not difficult to connect a contempt for all authority, parental and magisterial, and this soon breaks up the foundations of society. Then there is that still unabated nuisance of young girls going about with fruit and candy; and by their very manner of life exciting, if not soliciting heartless wretches to make them their frequent or future prey. Is our community doomed to stand quietly by and see these streams of social corruption rising and swelling? Is there no arm long enough and strong enough to reach the fountain and check, if not suppress, its issues?
We have given so much space to this topic of the report, that we must be satisfied with but a brief notice of the rest.
The State Prison at Charlestown, of which Henry K. Frothingham is warden, contains 476 prisoners, one-third of whom are foreigners. Six deaths occurred during the year, and the average number on the sick list was six. Libraries are highly commended as a means of moral culture, and it is recommended that they be furnished at the expense of the Commonwealth, not only to the State prison, but to county gaols and houses of correction.
The stinted supply of water at the Charlestown prison is mentioned as an evil, and it is a very expensive one too, inasmuch as it was procured during part of the summer, at an expense of from two to five dollars a day!
In the county gaol there were received between November 1, 1850, and November 1, 1851, 5,541 prisoners, of both sexes, 3,135 of whom were foreigners. The daily average was 120. The Grand Jury think that the Commonwealth’s witnesses should receive as good fare while in prison, as they would be likely to receive at home. Whereas, they now are served with the same food that convicts receive. Whether this is not quite as good as most honest poor men can afford, does not appear.
In the Alms House at Deer Island during the six months ending December 1, 1851, 931 paupers were received, of whom 686 were foreigners. Of the whole number, 33 were males, and 398 females, and 203 were under 12 years of age. The number of deaths in the same period was 77. There is a loud complaint here also, that the supply of water is inadequate. No trifling defect in such an establishment.
The Grand Jury advert to the intolerable nuisance of bawdy houses, and suggest the expediency of a law, making the owners of such houses responsible for the use which is made of their premises. There is also a distinct reference in the report to the great disparity of punishments for similar offences, and the evil consequences which attend it—a subject to which we have more than once invited and urged attention.
The erection of the new County Jail in Boston, is such an important movement in the prison-world, and the structure and occupants present so many interesting topics of remark, that we must make it the subject of a distinct article.