A Sixteen-Year-Old's Descent
A young boy is sent to reform school following a string of grocery store burglaries in Everett.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Sheriff James of Snohomish County was at the Rainier yesterday with John Weinhart, a 16-year-old boy whom he was taking to Chehalis to serve a three-year term in the reform school for burglary. The boy was arrested for burglarizing several stores at Everett, securing about $250 in cash and goods. He confessed to having robbed P. K. Lewis' grocery three times, taking about $15 from the cash drawer on each occasion, and also stole clothes, guns and cutlery from other stores.
“The boy was arrested for burglarizing several stores at Everett, securing about $250 in cash and goods.”
This account captures the heavy-handed juvenile justice of the 1890s, where property crimes against businesses like groceries often resulted in multi-year sentences in state reformatories. Today, Everett and Snohomish County grapple with similarly complex questions about youth crime and the efficacy of incarceration versus rehabilitation.
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