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Show A CRIME AMNEX-TO A PUBLIC SCHOOL Smaller Pupils Taught to Pick Pockets by Their Elders in School. 1 We find in the Xew York Sun an article entitled j "Public School Crime Annex," in which the details are given of the manner in which a public school I in .Rivington street, which is in the very heart of an j overcrowded tenement district, has been utilized for the purpose of initiating young boys in the "art and mystery" of pocket picking. Older boys, who enacted en-acted the role of Fagins, gave regular lessons in the most modern methods of relieving unsuspecting' persons of their pocketbooks and other valuables. This school for thieves might have continued indefinitely inde-finitely if one of its pupils had not undertaken to practise in the school house the light-fingered lessons les-sons which he had been taught. Here is how the story of the discovery is told by the New York Sun: "The trouble began away back last summer when the teachers' convention was in session. School 20 has a fine roof garden, which it keeps running all summer for the children of the East Side. Principal Prin-cipal II. W. Smith invited a delegation to visit his school. There were many children on the roof garden gar-den that day. They marched and sang and spoke pieces for the visitors. Afterward the teachers walked among them, patting their heads and hoping hop-ing that they would grow up to be good and useful citizens. . "It was at the door of the school that a teacher let out a scream and held up an open wrist bag. " "I've been robbed !' she said. purse is gone!' " 'And so have I,' said another and yet another. Three bags had been opened and three purses lifted." lift-ed." On investigation it was learnt that the teachers had been robbed by one of the boys who had been . trained to pick pockets in the very school where the robbery took place. One of the little fellows who had been taught the best way of robbing women's handbags, gave the police the following description of how he and his schoolmates had been instructed in the ways of the pickpocket by "stalls," which, in the thives' vocabulary, means one who assists a pickpocket by diverting the attention of his victim: "The stalls used to teach us. . They're the big follows, you know. We'd get down in the entryway of the school, where it's dark and you can't see by night. The stalls had some old bags like women carry. They'd carry them like women, and we'd walk along beside 'em and try to open the bags without with-out making 'em jerk. It was hard to leavm. 'Those that open with' regular clasps, are the easiest. It's ' harder tv opeif the. fines ihaj; jou haye .to .press doyen, on'." ou have to remember to walk right alongside and swing your arm just the way she does. If you get out of step you're gone. The stalls said that they'd kill us if we ever peached. There were seven or eight stalls, and about twerrty boys, maybe. j "The stalls used to take two or three boys out every afternoon after school. I was never allowed to work. I haven't got slick enough yer. ;;But-sometimes they let me go along. Last week two stalls took me to One Hundred and Twenty-fifth street and Third avenue. They had a boy along t& do the-work." the-work." We have here a sample of the clangers young boys are exposed to in large cities.' The candy, soda water, ice cream, cigarettes and other things procurable by stolen money are the baits that lure them. Whilst, the Fagins, Avere diligently engaged in initiating their pupils in ihe basement of school No. 20, there was nothing done by the teachers in the other part of the building to counteract the evil effect of the thieves' school. Their duty was to give instruction in reading, arithmetic and other elementary branches which in no way protected the little victims against the grave dangers they were exposed to by the evil teachings of the "stalls." The teachers, of course, are not to be blamed, as moral training is excluded from the curriculum of our public schools, which are managed on the prin- i ciples that if children are well grounded in the three Bs everything will be all right with them. What happened in the basement of school Xo. 20 shows that this theory of education is not well based. The little pupils in what the Xew York Sun calls "Public School Crime Annex"-would not have proved so apt scholars if upon their young minds there had been engraven moral lessons which can-, not be learned from arithmetic or grammar or geography. ge-ography. Freeman's Journal. - . i ' |