Teenage crime in Thanet and what constitutes a criminal joyride

I think it is at around the age of fourteen that some of us first started thinking about making money, some of by working others by resorting to crime and some to solutions worse than crime.

My grandfather lied about his age and joined up and landed at Gallipoli, I had problems of my own being disabled, but somehow managed to find ways to make money.

The pictures in this post all feature charabancs which is one of the things our teenage criminal spent the proceeds of crime on.

Another article from from the 1916 East Kent Times

"A Ramsgate shop boy aged 14, who admitted the theft of £2 from his employer, told the local Justices on Friday morning that he spent the money on the purchase of a telescope, for which he paid a guinea, char-a-banc rides into the country, a visit to a tea shop and the purchase of a cigarette holder. 

The lad, Ernest WOOD, of Salisbury Avenue, was employed at Messrs Curry's, cycle dealers, and the offence was committed between July 22nd and 31st. Bertram DAWKINS, manager at the cycle stores, 29 Queen Street, said he resided on the premises, and that the lad had been in his employment for some months. 

Witness placed a sum amounting to over £9 in a cash box in a cabinet in the wall in his private apartments upstairs at the store on July 22nd. Money from the till was put into the cash box each day, which was locked in the cabinet at night and left open during the daytime. On July 31st he noticed that the window catch of the room in which the box was kept was broken and he examined the box and discovered a shortage of £2 in the contents. 

He informed the police and during the afternoon, defendant and his mother called on him and commenced to talk about the money in a disconnected manner. The latter said to the lad in witness' presence, "Why don't you tell the truth?" and after some persuasion the lad accompanied him upstairs, where he told him that he went into the room on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday and took a 10s treasury note out of the cash box and on Friday or Saturday he "crept up" and took a second while the witness was busy in the shop. 

He interposed the remark that his mother should not be told and added on Saturday he took a £1 note. While giving evidence P C STANNER produced a brass bound telescope, which he said he discovered the lad had purchased for £1 1s. at a shop ion Addington Street. 

When he interrogated him the lad assured him that he got the money from his patent money box, which when containing forty sixpences, opened automatically. He said he changed the coins, partially at a bank and at a coffee tavern, but as banks closed at the time indicated by the lad, witness accompanied him to the tavern in question. There he learned that the lad had a tea which he had paid for with a £1 note. 

Outside the shop he asked witness not to lock him up or tell his mother if he told the truth, and he then admitted the theft. 

To the Justices the lad said he had spent the remainder of the money on char-a-banc rides and in the purchase of a cigar holder, but confessed to the Clerk that he did not smoke cigars. 

The Chief Constable said the boy had not been before the Court before and bore a good character from previous employers. His father was in Salonika with HM Forces. 

The lads mother, down whose cheeks tears flowed during the time she was in Court, told the Bench that her son would take no notice of her. After he had taken the money he wanted to get into the Army. 

She felt that she would like someone to look after him in order to protect him for his future life until her husband came home, but after the Mayor had given the lad a good talking to and secured from him a promise for his future good behaviour, the mother consented to him being bound over when she was informed that the Police Court Missionary would look after him. 

That course was adopted in the sureties of the mother and the boy each of £5 for twelve months. 

This is the only one that says anything on the back: "Driver C Crow nigger mistral A Kirby 1920" which says something about the past that just doesn't decode now. 

It makes me wonder if any of the things that I write will one day be seen as completely unacceptable. 

Back to today, work in the bookshop secondhand bookshops to get eclectic acquisitions and here is the link to the pictures of ours today http://michaelsbookshop.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/philip-pullman-in-bookshop.html

I did skive off for a walk during the afternoon and apart from the exhibition in York Street Gallery which is the subject of the previous post I did snap some out and about pictures, here is the link http://www.michaelsbookshop.com/1017l/id5.htm