| No. in Admissions Register: | 21 |
| Date of admission: | 2 April 1853 |
| Weekly payments: | - |
| Age: | 16 |
| Education: | Good |
| Previous employment: | Errand boy |
| Crimes, how often and in what prison: | Various prisons, 9 |
| Training in reformatory: | Shoemaking |
| When left reformatory: | June 1854 |
| Parentage and family: | Mother dead |
| Residence: | Ellis Street, Birmingham- |
| Trade of father: | - |
| With whom the boy is placed: | his parent |
| 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 September 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:- … John Vernon, about twelve years old, had been in prison twice, the first time about four years ago. Committed for trial on the 7th of January last. He said:- I remember being put in the strait jacket for two days, from ten in the morning till ten at night, for shouting to other boys. That was after trial. I was upon bread and water for two days, after that the strait jacket, and after that seven days at the crank. This was one punishment by the Governor’s orders given in my presence. The strait jacket hurt my throat and my chest.. The Governor kept me at the crank for three weeks and four days, and one day I did not get my breakfast, not having done my work. I worked at the crank till the day I went out at four o’clock in the afternoon. [The next few sentences were an opinion that delaying the release of prisoners from the morning to the afternoon as a punishment was in fact unlawful and actionable].
2 January 1855 It is recorded in the Minute Book of the Reformatory that: they hear good accounts of John Vernon, who is apprenticed in the town
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