In May, 1906, he was arrested for robbing a grocery store, but there was no complaint and he was discharged. Later on in the same year he was arrested on some unknown charge, and fined $5.00. At this time his continual truancy became too serious to be ignored and he was committed to the New York Truant School. Mrs. Doyle resented this action and immediately transferred the other children from the public school to the parochial school.
Raymond was released from the truant school in 1907, but was not long out of trouble. He was in company with John Larrabie and the two Rafferty boys when Larrabie threw a brick and killed an organ grinder. He escaped arrest for his complicity in this affair, but six months later he was again in court, this time on a charge of burglary. Together with two other boys, he had broken a pane of glass in a stationery store and had run away with some fishing tackle and two baseballs. The boys were put on parole and later the sentence was suspended for all three.
In the fall of the same year, Raymond conceived a bold plan for outwitting the truant officer. He persuaded George Riley to join him, and together they arranged a home on one of the tenement roofs. Here they lived for three months, stealing enough food for their needs or money to buy it and going down to the streets only when necessary. One day in January, when life must have been growing chilly out of doors, George Riley was caught stealing a dozen eggs. He was taken down to court, and sent to the Protectory on his former record. Raymond was clever enough to escape without even an arrest. A year and a half after this episode, in August, 1909, Raymond was again in court, this time on a charge of petty larceny. He was discharged. Four months later he was involved with his brother Patrick and another boy in a very serious burglary and re-committed to an institution.
Patrick Doyle, his brother, had also had a grave delinquency history. It is true that Patrick was not considered an instinctively wayward child and might have been influenced for better at the proper time and by the use of wise methods. But under his brother’s unchecked leadership his mischievous tendencies had led him into lawless ways, and the court’s way of dealing with him did not prove reformative. At the age of nine he was brought into the public school by the truant officer, but the next day he ran out during the session and did not return. Toward the end of that year, 1908, he was arrested for stealing bread from a wagon. Three months later he was caught with Matthew Rooney in the burglary of a grocery store, and paroled for two months. After one month of this parole had expired he was caught again in another burglary and committed to the Catholic Protectory for three months on account of having violated his parole. Six months after he had been discharged from this commitment he and his brother Raymond, and a third member of their gang were caught stealing in an apartment—the serious case mentioned above—and all three were sent away for long terms.
The circumstances of this burglary were secured from various sources—the court records, the newspapers, the school, and neighborhood gossip—all of the accounts tallying in an unusually neat and accurate way. Raymond and Patrick Doyle took Charlie Muller in tow and broke into a neighbor’s apartment in search of anything that could be readily converted into money. They found a trunk standing in a corner and turned the contents upside down upon the floor. From the pile they selected a few articles of underwear and a watch. They took a gun that was lying on a chair and snatched up a canary bird in its cage. As they turned to go, they were confronted by the older son of the family, who had returned from work and was standing in the doorway. One of the boys, this young man declared, “pulled a knife for him,” so that he “ran for his life.” On the corner of the street he found a policeman, who took his address and promised to send a detective. Meanwhile the boys came out of his house and went to a restaurant, where they were subsequently taken in charge by the detective. The judge sentenced two of the boys to the House of Refuge and one to the Protectory, each for fifteen months. Raymond, after his discharge, refused to work and spent his time loafing at his usual “hang-outs.”
The attitude of the neighbor whose apartment had been entered was significant. The older son, Samuel, who had arrived at the climax and intercepted the gang, was very vindictive. He appeared in the children’s court as complainant and did all in his power to secure the three convictions. On the other hand, Samuel’s brother and sister wished to hush the matter up or, at least, to keep it out of court. “All boys will be wild and these are little things and mean nothing. They just wanted nickels for moving pictures.” Reasoning in this way, according to the easy-going standards of the neighborhood, they tried to dissuade Samuel from going to court and appearing against the boys.
Charles Muller, who was sent to the House of Refuge with Patrick Doyle, came from a respectable home. His father had been dead for many years and the family income consisted of the wages of his mother and older sisters. Before the girls had become old enough to earn the family had passed through a period of the direst poverty. Charlie was not an ungovernable lad. On the contrary, he had a weak and sullen disposition and was often used as a tool by his comrades. His first arrest was for playing craps in the street, and he was put on what his mother called “patrole.” A son-in-law went down to court and “paid $5.00 to a red-headed lawyer fellow who said he could get him off, and did so.” Some time later he stayed away from school for seven weeks without his family’s knowledge, always coming in regularly at lunch time and pretending to go back to classes. At this time his mother had a stroke of paralysis, and he took advantage of her lameness to disregard the previous rules about bedtime, meals, and so on. He was arrested again, and this time it was the daughter who paid the lawyer $5.00. In the last arrest, for the apartment burglary, the family refused to re-engage this man, and, according to Mrs. Muller’s vehement declaration, “every boy in court that day was sent away for fifteen months, Charles among the rest.”
Joseph McGratty was another of the Doyle gang who was first arrested at the age of nine. The McGratty family was supported by the father, who was a street-cleaner, and by an older son who was a jockey. Joseph’s irregularities began with truancy and his first arrest was for petty larceny. On this occasion he was discharged. Shortly afterward he applied for a transfer from his school on the ground that his family were moving to a certain address in West Twenty-sixth Street. The story of the moving was entirely untrue, and Joseph never presented his transfer at any other school. The school has since learned that the McGrattys were still living at their old address, but it has never been able to lay hands upon Joseph by any means in its power and force him to attend. He has been arrested for stone throwing, for theft, for larceny of an automatic clock in company with the notorious Rafferty boys, and twice for burglary, the first time in company with the brother of the gang leader. His last arrest sent him to the Catholic Protectory.
John Larrabie, who killed an organ grinder, was no worse than several of his gang. His family was degraded and desperately poor. The father drank and the mother was given to loud-voiced harangues and to calling maledictions down upon neighbors who displeased her. John came to school ugly-tempered and resentful. At a rebuke from his teacher he attempted to jump out of the window. One day as he stood on a roof with Raymond Doyle and the two Rafferty boys, the quartette spied in the street below a couple of Italian organ grinders with whom they were carrying on a feud. Loose bricks were at hand for missiles and in an instant John Larrabie had thrown one at the “ginnies.” The boys saw one of the men drop in the street—the victim died, in fact, only a few minutes later—and two of them escaped across the roofs. The other two, Larrabie and Joe Rafferty, were caught and taken to court on a charge of felonious assault. They were remanded for four days and then discharged to the coroner. The court records show that John Larrabie was rearrested at the coroner’s for manslaughter, that his guilt was patent, but that no complaint was taken. Four months later he was committed to the Catholic Protectory, at his father’s instance, as an ungovernable child, his father being ordered to pay $2.00 a week toward his support in the institution.
The brothers Riemer, Henry and Alexander, were two of the “wildest” boys of this gang. Both were incorrigible truants. They were arrested in November, 1906, for stealing coal from a neighbor’s cellar and were paroled. In February, 1907, Alexander was sent to the Protectory for three months for stealing a chicken from the Washington Market. Four months after his discharge he was re-committed for nearly a year’s term. Shortly after this, in April, 1909, he was arrested for stone throwing, fined $1.00, and imprisoned one day. In November he was arrested for assaulting another boy. As he had been away from home four days, and from school a week, and had been involved in the theft of a pair of gloves, and also because his mother recommended commitment, he was sent to the Protectory for a third term. He was not discharged until of working age, when the family secured him a job directly under his father’s supervision. Henry Riemer was arrested several times with his brother, and also twice for theft, once for striking a boy over the head with a pistol, and once for injuring property. He saved himself from a commitment in one affair, a glove robbery, by informing on Harry Rafferty and sending the latter to the Protectory on his evidence. He himself had had two terms there, and was still under commitment up to date.