1/16/2024 0 Comments Case of cooper and thief wine![]() ![]() “This whispering and laughing,” he said, “is too often carried on in the pew under the eyes of the parents, who make no effort to check this growing evil.” Under the headline “ABSENT” in the November 21 edition of the newspaper, the editor stated that at a review of one of the local public schools it was revealed that “out of a school of about one hundred pupils, all but ten had been absent more or less.” Acknowledging that there were probably some legitimate cases where a child was too sick to attend school, they wrote that “it would be absurd to suppose that such a large proportion of the pupils were sick in the term,” and that “the whim of the pupils was the actual reason of many of the absences” and that parents “are responsible for the indulgence of those whims.”Ī week later, the editor of the Nantucket Weekly Mirror railed against juvenile behavior in church, “those children between the years of twelve and twenty, and mostly those with bonnets on, who greatly annoy the congregation with their noisy whispering and half-smothered laughing,” not to mention “writing nonsense on the fly-leaves” of hymnals. ![]() “It is winter only once a year, and if people cannot let young America enjoy themselves during that time we think it a pity. The Januedition of the Inquirer and Mirror records two letters from “some of our ‘fast youths’,” self-described “b’hoys” complaining about the “meanness of the town of Nantucket” in pouring ashes on the slides in the vicinity of Academy Hill. ”įor their part, the children objected to the town ruining all their fun. Two years later, in an article about agriculture on Nantucket in the Boston Cultivator, the author notes that the very idea of agriculture on the island “may sound strange to people who suppose that Nantucket is only a heap of sand that answers for a home for whalemen’s wives, daughters, and small boys. It would not be strange if, without the presence and control of fathers, they were a little wild…” Visitors, we were told, had complained as to the conduct of these boys. This seeming, we suppose, arises from the absence of men. Giles, a Unitarian minister and writer who had lectured at the Nantucket Atheneum three months before, wrote in August 1854 that “boys, next to women, abound, or seem to abound, in Nantucket. ![]() And in the more difficult cases, where the truants become unmanageable by all ordinary means, the State has generously and wisely provided for the education of such, at what are usually termed ‘State Reform Schools.’” (Nantucket Weekly Mirror) “With the present arrangement, it will, at least, be very inconvenient, if not expensive, to be absent from school, without good and sufficient reasons. It has been no great punishment to be thus escorted, as the vast major ity of absences among the boys will amply demonstrate. Truants, in many instances, have cared but little whether attended by a constable or or by their associates, and have again been absent. Previous laws have been almost entirely inoperative. “That there has been much remissness is this respect, that there have been many children among us who seldom, if ever attend our schools, and still others who are exceedingly irregular in their attendance. The Town expects that there shall be no children allowed to absent themselves from these nurseries of improvement.” (Nantucket Weekly Mirror) “That when any child or children between the ages of six and fifteen years, shall neglect to attend the Public or any other schools of Nantucket…and shall become an habitual truant or truants, and not attend any school, and without lawful occupation shall be growing up in ignorance, then it shall be the duty of the Committee appointed by the Town to have charge of these children…and for each and every such truancy and non-attendance there shall be imposed a fine of One Dollar for the use of the Town and all the cost of prosecution…. ![]() In the mid-1850s, there is an increase in calls in the newspapers for the town to crack down on the out-of-control youth: As we learned last week in Part 1: Island Children Running Rampant, during the mid-1800s, many Nantucket youth were participating in “wicked and lawless conduct.” We continue this week with what efforts were made to deter this behavior and to reform island children… ![]()
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