BOY-FIENDS.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 293, 20 May 1875, Page 3

BOY-FIENDS.

Accounts reach us from America of an interesting youth, otherwise called “ the boy-fiend,” who has just been sentenced to death at Boston for having murdered a little boy named Millan. He also confessed to having murdered a little girl named Curran ; and he is said to be the same “youthful fiend” who tortured a number of children in the suburbs of Boston a year or two ago. When he was asked whether he had anything to say against the sentence of death being pronounced against him, he said distinctly that he had not ; so that the boy must have intelligence as well at a vindictive disposition. By the side of such a human phenomenon, our boy-fiends are "feeble creatures. Mr Justice Grove dealt with one of them the other day, who, when he was but nine years of age, amused himself by stealing his father’s pony and cart, and selling the jpony for 10s, Later on in life, when he was getting on towards eleven, he seems to have varied his ordinary occupations by stealing his father’s purse, by running away with a mule, a cart, and a sheaf of barley, by setting fire to a bullock shed, by killing ducks on a pond by means of stones, and at length by getting lucifer matches and setting an oat stack on fire. When running away from the stack he was stopped by some children, he knocked down one and said he would kill the others. These amiable intentions, however, were frustrated, and Master William Scott was inforlned by Mr Justice Grove that he would be imprisoned for a month, have twelve strokes from a birch rod, and be sent to a reformatory for five years, all of which we hope will do him good.