What many young boys in the 1880s thought were pranks were regarded by the Idaho Statesman and most Boise residents as verging on the criminal. In June 1882 the paper complained: “Many small boys in our city do not seem to have any restraint whatever. It is not an uncommon occurrence to see boys from 8 to 15 years old out until 12 o’clock at night. For the good of the boys we would suggest the policy of some stringent ordinance on the subject.”
The Statesman recorded these night-time escapades with regularity, both before and after the passage of a set of juvenile ordinances in 1886. In an edition in April 1882: “Some time during Thursday night someone broke into the bath house attached to Nathan Falk’s residence on Idaho Street, and cutting a hole through the top of a trunk, took out everything therein contained. No articles were taken away, but the room was left in the greatest confusion. As the robbers carried nothing off, the inference is that they were boys and hoped to find money or other valuables in the trunk.”
When “misguided young men” were having fun “assaulting the doors and disturbing the happy slumbers of the innocent,” the Statesman issued this statement: “If the youth of this city persist in this action, the offenders will be summarily shot without benefit of clergy. This is the last warning.”
A week later it was suggested that “The boy who spends his evenings in reading newspapers, the local news of his own county, and the general news of the day, will certainly make a better boy than the one who spends his evenings on the street, or loafing at places where the town gossip is dished out in the most obscene and vulgar manner.”
The delicate feelings of Boise women also were offended, said the Statesman, by “young men and boys who are in the habit of bathing in a nude condition in the Boise River immediately below the bridge and near the road leading to the railroad depot. They should know that this is an offense for which the law prescribes a severe penalty, and that they are liable at any time to arrest and punishment.”
Despite the ordinance that made it illegal for anyone under 21 to frequent saloons, some undisciplined teenagers couldn’t seem to stay away from them. The paper observed that “Boys will be boys. They couldn’t be anything else if they wanted to, but they should behave themselves, and be informed of the city and Territorial law regulating their being abroad on the streets after 9 o’clock at night and frequenting saloons. The Territorial law prohibits them from hanging around saloons, and imposes a heavy fine on the proprietors of such places if they allow it.”
In November 1889, the Statesman lent perspective to the problem by observing: “The small boys of Boise City are not much better than those of other places of the same size; nor are they any worse.”
Arthur Hart writes this column on Idaho history for the Idaho Statesman each Sunday. E-mail histnart@mindspring.com.
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