| No. in Admissions Register: | 25 |
| Date of admission: | 20 April 1853 |
| Weekly payments: | - |
| Age: | 13 |
| Education: | - |
| Previous employment: | - |
| Crimes, how often and in what prison: | Birmingham, 2 |
| Training in reformatory: | Shoemaking |
| When left reformatory: | 25 March 1857 |
| Parentage and family: | Father dead |
| Residence: | - |
| Trade of father: | - |
| With whom the boy is placed: | - |
| 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:- …William Barnes [surname given thus], aged eleven, who had been committed for three months for stealing, said – I was put into the strait jacket for ringing my bell on Sunday. I did not know that when I touched the handle in my cell it would ring the bell. One of the men in the gaol came to me, took me by the ears, and showed me a little door in the wall on the outside of the cell, where the bell was, and said he would report me to the Governor next morning. After that I had no exercise, nor bed, nor light, until ten o’clock, for a week. I had done nothing but ring the bell. I was put into the strait jacket, the morning before Christmas day, just after breakfast, by Taylor, and was kept in it until ten o’clock at night, and I then found my supper of meal, broth, and bread, in my cell ready for me. It was brought by Brown. The strait jacket hurt my arms and made me cry out. I said, if I had taken my mother’s advice, I should not have been there. Brown came to look at me, but shut the door again, and did not slacken the jacket or the collar. John Vernon [boy 21] assisted me to get into the Reformatory Institution… [Some difficulty arose as to the date given by the boy [Lloyd Thomas, boy 36], and Captain Williams remarked that the punishment of this boy, and also of the boy previously examined [William Burns], were not entered in the punishment book].
4 April 1856 Absconded with Samuel Compton [boy 54] and Mark Tremble [boy 64].
13 June 1856 Caught in Coventry and returned to the Reformatory. A report in the Coventry Herald Friday 20 June 1856 p.4 col.5 says: The two other boys Mark Tremble and William Burns who had left the Asylum in company with Compton, were remanded to give time to communicate with the Birmingham authorities, that they might be fetched back.
25 March 1857 Left by his own desire, being a free boy. He is employed and earning his living as a shoemaker.
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