CLEVER EIGHT-YEAR-OLD HOUSEBREAKER

Northern Advocate, 1 April 1937, Page 6

CLEVER EIGHT-YEAR-OLD HOUSEBREAKER

Parents’ Attempts At Restraint Overcome

(Received 10 a.m.) LONDON, March 30. An eight-year-old boy housebreaker admitted in the Juvenile Court at Poole today 15 thefts, including a sum of £3O. ! 1 . The police stated in evidence that the burglaries were so clever that they were believed to have been the work of a master cracksman until the boy showed how he had obtained entry to the premises. The parents fruitlessly tried to restrain the boy with a chain, and by tieing him up with a rope and putting weights in his boots. However, when he was sent to bed without clothes, the boy emerged from an upper window in a sheet. The magistrate ordered the lad to be sent to a special school until he is 16. The mother The boy is lovable, but adventurous. When I poisoned my hand he bathed,- dressed and powdered the baby and did all he could to relieve me of the work in the home, where there are six children. I cannot oppose him going away as he has taken his brothers, aged seven and five, on his expeditions.

“Y'OU .have had one warning already, and I air. going to do whatj is very lenient and fine you instead* of sending you to prison.”' Ifi these] swords Mr E. C. Levvey, S.M., address-’ led Raymond Murray Watson, aged 47;| who was charged with being intoxi'-j cated when in charge of a motor \ car when he appeared in the Christ-] church Magistrate’s Court. . Watson? was fined £SO, in default <0- days”' imprisonment with hard labour, arid; his license was cancelled for 1,8, monthSy—(Press Assn.); '*