| No. in Admissions Register: | 16 |
| Date of admission: | 13 January 1853 |
| Weekly payments: | - |
| Age: | 12 |
| Education: | indifferent |
| Previous employment: | errand boy |
| Crimes, how often and in what prison: | Birmingham, 5 |
| Training in reformatory: | Tailor |
| When left reformatory: | 20 September 1854 |
| Parentage and family: | Mother living |
| Residence: | - |
| Trade of father: | - |
| With whom the boy is placed: | Bristol Reformatory |
| Address: | - |
| Trade: | - |
12 September 1853 In an extensive report of an inquiry into brutal treatment in Birmingham Gaol in Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, Monday 12 Sep 1853 p.6 col.3, is the following: …boys from the Reformatory School were then examined as to the state of discipline at the time they were in the gaol:- … Isaac Giddings [surname spelled thus], aged eleven, who had been imprisoned three or four times said – I remember being put in the strait jacket three or four months ago. I was taken before the Governor, who sentenced me yo be put three days in the strait jacket, three days on bread and water, to be kept three days from going to Chapel, three days no exercise, and fourteen nights without my bed till ten o’clock. I had the jacket on from about eleven in the morning till supper time, had a collar round my neck, and was strapped to the wall. They gave me bread, and called it a six ounce loaf, but I do not think it was; it was only the size of my fist. It was ‘chucked’ in through the hole in the door. I could not get at it till I had the collar taken off. I had gruel offered me. I was put into the strait jacket for three days because in dusting my window I knocked a bit of soap down which was put to stop a hole in one of the panes. At the Sessions I was sentenced by Mr Spooner, who said he would try to get some kind gentleman to take me, and if he could not he must transport me for seven years. The Governor took me back to Mr Spooner, and my sentence was altered to seven days imprisonment, after which it was arranged that I should go to Mr Ellis’s.
7 October 1854 in the Minute Book of the Reformatory it is recorded that I Gittings has been transferred to Kingswood, Bristol, at the entire expense of Mr William Miles MD, who pays Miss Carpenter 7 shillings a week on his account, and we have received in exchange a boy of the name Sylvester [boy 59] from Shepton Mallett, Somersetshire, at the recommendation of Mr Miles.
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