Weird Tales/Volume 4/Issue 2/Juvenile Criminal

Juvenile Criminal

"AMONG the children," says that active philanthropist, the Hon. Grey Bennet, in his evidence before the Police Committee, "whom I have seen in prison, a boy of the name of Leary was the most remarkable. He was about thirteen years of age, good looking, sharp, and intelligent, and possessing a manner which seemed to indicate a character very different from what he really possessed. When I saw him, he was under sentence of death for stealing a watch, chain and seals, from Mr. Princep's chambers in the Temple. He had been five years in the practice of delinquency, progressively from stealing an apple off a stall, to housebreaking and highway robbery. He belonged to the Moorfields' Catholic Chapel, and there became acquainted with one Ryan in that school, by whom he was instructed in the various arts and practices of delinquency. His first attempts were at tarts, apples, etc., next at loaves in bakers' baskets; then at parcels of halfpence on shop counters and money-tills in shops; then to breaking shop windows and drawing out valuable articles through the aperture, picking pockets, housebreaking, etc. Leary has often gone to school the next day with several pounds in his pockets, as his share of the produce of the previous day's robberies. He soon became captain of a gang, generally since known as Leary's gang, with five boys and sometimes more, furnished with pistols, taking a horse and cart with them; and, if they had an opportunity in their road, they cut off the trunks of gentlemen's carriages, when, after opening them and according to their contents, so they would be governed in prosecuting their further objects in that quarter; they would divide into parties of two, sometimes only one, and leaving one with the horse and cart, go to farm and other houses, stating their being on the way to see their families and begging for some bread and water; by such tales, united with their youth, they obtained relief and generally ended by robbing the house and premises. In one instance Leary was detected and taken and committed to Maidstone gaol, but the prosecutor not appearing against him, he was discharged. In these excursions he has stayed out a week and upward, when his share has produced him from 50 pounds to 100 pounds. He has been concerned in various robberies in London and its vicinity, and has had property at one time amounting to 350 pounds; but when he had money, he either got robbed of it by elder thieves who knew he had so much money about him, or he lost it by gambling at flash houses, or spent it among loose characters of both sexes. After committing innumerable depredations, he was detected at Mr. Derrimore's at Kentish Town, stealing some plate from that gentleman's dining room; when several other similar robberies coming against him in that neighborhood he was, in compassion to his youth, placed in the Philanthropic Asylum; but being now charged with Mr. Princep's robbery, he was taken, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death, but was afterward respited, and returned to that Institution. He is little, and well-looking; and has robbed to the amount of 3,000 pounds during his five years' career. This surprising boy has since broke out and escaped from the Philanthropic, went to his old practices, and was again tried at the Old Bailey, and is transported for life."