Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1886 — A Subject For Judge Lynch. [ARTICLE]

A Subject For Judge Lynch.

A Reading, Pa., telegram says: City Supt. of Schools Balliet was informed a few days ago of a pupil who has just entered the public schools here who shows a remarkable mania for torturing persons and animals with fire. His name is Rueben Briner, aged 7 years, a scholar in one of the Ninth ward schools. The teacher can do nothing with him, and is compelled to keep him seated on the platform near her desk, where he once tried to set her dress on fire. Until recently he resided with his parents in Philadelphia. There, while his parents were absent, he lit a piece of paper at the stove and deliberately set fire to the clothing of his little brother, aged 18 months, whose limbs were burned to a crisp until he died, while the youug fiend enjoyed it, and gleefully told his parents what he had done. He was penned in the garret and kept on bread and water for a month, after which he was sent to Reading, as he expressed an intention to cut his two brothers’ throats with a butcher-knife. He continually wants to set things on fire in school, and has several times been detected just in time to prevent the destruction of buildings. While his grandmother, with whom he is now living, was away from home, he caught the large house cat, placed her on the redhot stove, and roasted her to death. Such inhuman acts of cruelty innumerable have been reported of him.