General Chat

My relative George Wise is shown on the 1841 census as being a " Boy in Detection" on board the Training Ship Cornwall of West Thurrock Purfleet Essex.

Does anyone know if any records exist which shows date of detention on the ship and date of release together with the crime committed resulting on being detained?

Cheers

some ifno relating to the time it was used as detention establishment

Extract from an interview in a 1994 BBC TV series called Forbidden Britain: Our Secret Past 1900-1960. The speaker, George Kirby from Liverpool, born in 1922, had been an inmate on the boys' training ship Cornwall in the 1930s.

TS Cornwall, moored in the Thames east of London, was, like some other (but not all) training ships, explicitly a reformatory school ship, run on naval lines but not operated by the Navy. These ships took out-of-control lads aged typically 12 to 16 and sought to turn them into disciplined, useful seafarers; at most if not all of them, corporal punishment was routine. In earlier times this would often have been with the birch, but by the 1930s the cane was the more usual instrument.

The speaker recalls that for his caning on TS Cornwall he had to bend over with his head held between the bosun's legs. The punishment was carried out in front of the whole ship's company mustered on the deck. It was applied to the seat of the trousers.

The producers of the TV programme have included some shots from a 1931 Movietone newsreel item about the training ship Arethusa. I have heard that Arethusa was unusual in that, unlike Cornwall and most other training ships, its canings were inflicted on the boys' bare buttocks.


http://www.corpun.com/vidrn1.htm
Loads of info if you "Google"

George

Janet, George

Thanks for the info, sorry about such a late response.

Firstly I need to make a correction to my origninal post the Census was 1871 and not 1841

Janet, I have done a bit more reshearch following your remarks about training/detention ships.

I believe the ship was classified as an"Institution for Industrial Training of Juvenile Offenders. They were not classified as the same as Industrial Schools" Source www.institutions.org.uk

In fact the conditions of admittances were:-
Sentanced to not less than 3 years detention
Not less than 13 years old or more than 15 years old
certified as sound and healthy

Which bbrings me back to my original request, does anyone know of what records will show the crime committed and the dates of detention of people detained

cheers

Tony