Wheeling Register

YOUNG TOUGHS.
THE BOY BURGLARS HELD TO COURT IN $500 EACH.
The Charge Feloniously and Burglariously Breaking and Entering—Details of the Crime.
Samuel Hirsch and Lohman Tierney, the two boys who looted Fred Treiber's confectionery early Sunday morning, were arraigned before Justice Davis last evening at 7:30 o'clock. The boys were defended by Col. W. W. Arnett, and Prosecuting Attorney Jordan appeared for the State. After hearing the evidence, the Justice held the boys in $500 each for the Grand Jury. Tierney gave bond, while Hirsch went to jail.
After a number of witnesses had been examined, including Mr. Treiber and a young girl who attends to customers in the store, and who stated that Tierney had come in the place Saturday and exhibited a key, saying he had brought it from home, and that he had filed it down so that it would unlock any door, young Hirsch was put on the stand, and detailed his whereabouts during the entire night and the circumstances of the robbery. He said that early in the evening he met Tierney in the McLure House, and ran about the streets with him and another young man, the latter taking the two former into a restaurant and giving them their supper. About midnight, after the third party had left and gone home, Tierney made a proposition to Hirsch in the McLure House, to go down street and enter a store. Hirsch asked how they would get in, when Tierney replied that he used to work in the store, and had the key of the front door. He said he then agreed to go, thinking that if Tierney had the key he must have a right to go into the place, and the two started down street. Arriving at Treiber's place of business, Tierney opened the door and the two boys went in. Witness went to the rear of the room, at Tierney's suggestion, while the latter went behind the counter and cleaned out the money drawer. When he came back, he said there was "nothing but coppers" in the drawer, and Tierney then helped himself liberally to candy, figs, oranges, grapes, etc., inviting the witness to do the same. After remaining in the store for half an hour, the boys left, locking the door behind them, and turned up alley 12 to the cross alley which runs out onto Fourteenth street, opposite the Public Library. They turned down Fourteenth street onto Market, up Market to Twelfth and up Twelfth to Chapline, where they went up the stairs leading to Col. Arnett's office, where they knew Jeff Davis was asleep. They tried to awaken Jeff by kicking and hammering on the door, but Jeff was oblivious to everything, so the boys kicked the door open, knocking the lock off, and went in. The boys woke Jeff up, who asked where they got the stuff. Tierney said "over the creek," which remark, Hirsch said, brought the idea first into his head that his companion had no right in the store. Jeff, early the next morning, put the police onto the theft, and later "arrested" Hirsch and took him down to headquarters, where the boy gave the thing away to Officer Junkins. Jeff said last night that he "thought Kris Krinkle had come down the chimney" when he woke up in the lawyer's office, and saw the layout of good things. He said he happened to be sleeping in the office through having an engagement to wash the windows Sunday morning, and stayed in the office over night so that the job wouldn't slip his mind.
Young Hirsch is only thirteen years old, while Tierney is about seventeen. The former, as was stated yesterday morning, is something of a waif, but the latter has a good home on the Island, where he is surrounded by every comfort. The whole thing is a sad commentary upon the growing negligence of parents in allowing boys of from 12 to 17 years of age to roam about the streets all hours of the night, where they naturally fall into bad habits and associate with depraved characters of both sexes. Not a night passes but the newspaper men and police see boys, often of respectable and well-known families, upon the streets or in saloons, associating with older companions whose influence must necessarily be of the most pernicious character.
The boys who find themselves in the above serious trouble compose but a small portion of a gang which has been engaged in petty pilfering for a year past. One or two of the crowd have been dismissed from situations they held in stores for stealing cash and small articles of merchandise, and others have offered goods for sale upon the street which were undoubtedly stolen. Two or three of the boys belong to eminently respectable families, and have had the advantages of proper training. There is a prospect that at the trial of Hirsch and Tierney a tale will be unfolded which will carry dismay to the parents of several young Jack Sheppards.