As early as 1846, a report came from the school committee of the city, in which the mischief of truancy is represented as not only interfering greatly with the regular process of instruction, but as exerting a demoralising effect which can hardly be counteracted, and employs much of the time and energy of the masters in preserving the discipline which it assails. Nor is it an evil (says the report) which ends with the schools. If it did, our duty would still require of us to do whatever we can do for its suppression or diminution. But it is certain, that, from the juvenile depravity of which the truancy of the school is both a sign and a cause, grows a large part of the suffering and crime of society. It is rare to find in our prisons those who were well cared for as children, and trained in regular habits of useful industry. An active child can be kept out of evil only by giving him something good to do; and when idleness has thoroughly corrupted the earliest years of life, what can we expect from riper years, but a maturity of vice, greater as temptations become stronger, and opportunities for crime are enlarged?
In the worst cases, the truancy of the children, or their entire absence from school, is permitted by the parents, and sometimes caused by their desire to share in those wretched gains of debasing or dishonest pursuits, for which after-time will exact a fearful price.
If the law on the one hand, provides schools to which all the children of this city may go, on the other it provides another institution to which certain children may be made to go. Here then are institutions for those who will, and for those who will not be instructed; and under one or other of these classes all our children may be arranged. The 143d chapter of the Revised Statutes, Sect. 5th, enumerates among those who may be sent to the House of Correction, “stubborn children;” and the “Act concerning juvenile offenders in the City of Boston,” authorizes the City Council to establish a building for “the reception, instruction, employment and reformation of such juvenile offenders as are hereinafter named;” this building we have: and the third section of the same Act provides, “That any Justice or Judge of the said Courts, (the Supreme Court, Municipal Court, and Police Courts) on the application of the Mayor, or of any Aldermen of the City of Boston, or of any Director of the House of Industry, or House of Reformation, or of any Overseer of the Poor, of said City, shall have power to sentence to said house of employment and reformation, all children who live an idle and dissolute life, whose parents are dead, or if living, from drunkenness, or other vices, neglect to provide any suitable employment, or exercise any salutary control over said children.” And the sixth section provides that any child committed to the House of Correction, may be transferred to the House of Employment and Reformation.”
It would seem, therefore, that the framers of the laws have done enough, if they who are entrusted with the execution of the laws do their duty.
These statements and views were not without their effect, though measures of reform were not matured until 1850, when a law was past, which we copy entire as the shortest method of presenting the whole matter to the view of our readers.
“AN ACT CONCERNING TRUANT CHILDREN AND ABSENTEES FROM SCHOOL.”
1. Each of the several cities and towns in this Commonwealth, is authorized and empowered to make all needful provisions and arrangements concerning habitual truants and children not attending school, without any regular and lawful occupation, growing up in ignorance, between the ages of six and fifteen years; and also, all such ordinances and by-laws respecting such children, as shall be deemed most conducive to their welfare, and the good order of such city or town; and there shall be annexed to such ordinances, suitable penalties, not exceeding for any one breach, a fine of twenty dollars: provided, that said ordinances and by-laws shall be approved by the Court of Common Pleas for the county, and shall not be repugnant to laws of the commonwealth.
2. The several cities and towns, availing themselves of the provisions of this act, shall appoint, at the annual meetings of said towns, or annually by the mayor and aldermen of said cities, three or more persons, who alone shall be authorized to make the complaints, in every case of violation of said ordinances or by-laws, to the justice of the peace, or other judicial officer, who, by said ordinances, shall have jurisdiction in the matter, which persons, thus appointed, shall have authority to carry into execution the judgments of said justices of the peace, or other judicial officer.
3. The said justices of the peace, or other judicial officers, shall, in all cases, at their discretion, in place of the fine aforesaid, be authorized to order children, proved before them to be growing up in truancy, and without the benefit of the education provided for them by law, to be placed, for such periods of time as they may judge expedient, in such institution of instruction or house of reformation, or other suitable situation, as may be assigned or provided for the purpose, under the authority conveyed by the first section, in each city or town availing itself of the powers herein granted.
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!