Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1898 — Rushed to the Reform School. [ARTICLE]

Rushed to the Reform School.

• Events moved fast Saturday with young Jim Blake, the 14 year old boy who was caught the other day swiping candy out of a box in a freight car, at the depot. At 2 o’clock he was bound over to the circuit court by Squire Burnham, and an hour or two later, at the request of his own father, he was taken before Judge Thompson, with a view to sending him to the state reform school, at Plainfield. The hearing was held in Hanley & Hunt's law office. The boy’s father is Al Blake, who runs the pool room over Rosenbaum’s saloon. He said he could do nothing with the boy, that he would not go to school, nor do any useful work, but just loafed around, and got into mischief. At the trial the boy said the candy was given him by a man whose name he did not know, but for whom he had piled wood. He said there was no other boy with him, in the raid on the candy boxes. The stories were out-and-out lies, as the boy afterwards admitted to Marshal McGowan, and to whom he gave up the name of the other boy. Judge Thompson committed the boy to the reform school, where he will in the ordinary course of of things, be kept until he is 21, and where he will be given a good education, be cured of his bad practices and taught habits of industry.