A Runaway at Sixteen
A teenage girl's disappearance sparks a search after she runs off with a local performer.
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.
Bonnie Martin, 16-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D. Miles Martin, 626 South Anderson Street, suddenly disappeared Wednesday night and is believed by her parents to have eloped with a traveling actor of the Pantages circuit. Miss Martin, who has now adopted the name of Helen Leigh, had constant trouble with her parents, who wished to curb her desires to go out on the streets at night, and her leave-taking came as a result of parental quarrels. Mrs. Martin, mother of the missing girl, swore to a complaint before Judge Arntson this afternoon, charging her daughter with being an incorrigible and with mingling with disorderly persons. The police have been given the warrant and are making a desperate attempt to locate the girl. At a late hour today the police announced that they had located Bonnie and the young man whom she eloped with in Oregon. Her arrest will take place at once.
“Mrs. Martin, mother of the missing girl, swore to a complaint... charging her daughter with being an incorrigible and with mingling with disorderly persons.”
Public notices and police warrants for 'incorrigible' youth highlight a bygone era of total parental and state control over adolescent autonomy. Today, the tensions between generational independence and protective boundaries remain, though the legal mechanisms for addressing them have shifted significantly toward social services rather than arrest warrants.
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