Wayward youths plagued city in 1907

Street urchins roamed Bangor a century ago getting into trouble. A group of young thugs and loafers was growing up in neighborhoods that were “schools for thieving.” The Rev. Alva Roy Scott described this situation one Sunday, sounding a bit like Charles Dickens reading a chapter from “Oliver Twist.”

This was back in the days when ministers’ sermons occasionally found their way into newspapers. The Rev. Scott delivered his expose from the pulpit of the Unitarian Church on March 25, 1906, and it was published the next afternoon in the Bangor Daily Commercial.

The minister enumerated some examples of youthful intransigence. Two boys, ages 12 and 13, had broken into a shooting gallery and stolen watches, revolvers, ammunition and hunting knives. An older brother who swept the floor there had left the back window open for them.

In a second case, a boy from another town was beaten and robbed after he refused to go into an alley with a group of young thugs. The same gang introduced men to a woman of ill repute who got them drunk and then disappeared so the boys could rob them.

“There seems to be a considerable number of girls entering on the road to vice,” observed the reverend. He used the example of a 13-year-old girl “full-fledged in immorality” who was trying to convince two younger girls they needed gentleman friends. “She had been telling the other girls about going to the theater with a gentleman friend and getting back to her room at 2 o’clock in the morning.” Three similar cases had come to the attention of the police around Christmas.

Certain neighborhoods were breeding grounds for crime: “We may not have real slums but those who are informed tell us of blocks occupied by transient and shiftless men and women who receive stolen property. There is also a colony or colonies at the edge of town with a population mostly bad. There are many children in these districts. Such communities, I am told, are veritable schools for thieving,” said the minister.

Other people also were concerned about the urchin problem. The “About Town” columnist for the Bangor Daily News was particularly upset by the number of errant waifs hanging around the Bangor Opera House. “Bangor has a curfew law, but somehow or other it doesn’t seem to reach a lot of small boys – a pitiful lot of ragged, starved-looking urchins, many specimens of which are to be found nightly hanging around the entrance of the Opera House,” wrote the anonymous columnist on March 23, 1907.

“The presence of these neglected children mingling with tough-looking young fellows of 16 to 25, bloated, profane and filthy loafers, has for long been a disgrace to the city and the theater. … They are walking images of poverty, ignorance and neglect – little old men, full of the bitter wisdom of the gutter, apt pupils in evil ways, with a vocabulary of slang and a cigarette breath.”

Some examples of juvenile delinquency “more than commonly pitiful” appeared in the pages of the Queen City’s dailies in the next few months. Edward Denehan, age 9, was sent to “the industrial school for boys for his minority” for stealing $50 from an open safe at the Fairbanks Bros. plumbers on Central Street, reported the Bangor Daily Commercial on June 1. He also stood accused of stealing three watches from S.L. Crosby Co. on Exchange Street and breaking windows at the Hebrew School. Denehan and some friends were picked up late at night riding the trolley. He claimed he had gotten the money by robbing an intoxicated man on a Hancock Street wharf.

Later that month six boys “with an average age of 13,” were jailed for a string of store burglaries in which small amounts of cash and tobacco were missing. One of the boys turned out to be a remarkable storyteller as well. Bernard Maynard, 13, claimed he and his brother Ollin and several of their partners were “spotters” for the liquor deputies and were paid to find “hides” or kitchen barrooms. The two Maynard brothers were sentenced to the state school for boys for the remainder of their minority and the other cases were continued, according to the Bangor Daily News on June 26.

In his sermon the year before, the Rev. Scott had suggested several solutions to the juvenile delinquency problem including closer cooperation among the police, the police matron, the truant officer, the city missionary, the overseers of the poor and various private Bangor charitable groups.

In particular, he targeted the annual Christmas supper at City Hall organized by the city missionary. He had been told every child there could have obtained a better supper at home. Last Christmas there had been a particularly ugly incident: “After the supper the Gentile boys tried to force the Jewish boys to eat ham sandwiches. A battle ensued in which basketsful of food were thrown over the floor.” The cost of the supper should be used to feed and clothe the poor, said the minister.

Another need was a separate place of detention for women and children staffed by a police matron. Now they were “lodged upstairs at the police station where they can hear all the hideous groans and cries and indecent language of drunken and vicious men. Only policemen are in attendance.”

Scott suggested “a system of friendly guardianship” in which mentors would help homeless youths. He called for more manual training and recreational opportunities for boys and girls including outdoor gym equipment, vacation schools in flower gardening and village improvement societies like those in Minneapolis and other cities. Of course, this same discussion on dealing with wayward youth continues today.

Wayne E. Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net