| No. in Admissions Register: | 31 |
| Date of admission: | 3 June 1853 |
| Weekly payments: | - |
| Age: | 12 |
| Education: | Indifferent |
| Previous employment: | None |
| Crimes, how often and in what prison: | Birmingham, 3 |
| Training in reformatory: | Farm labour |
| When left reformatory: | April 1854 |
| Parentage and family: | Father living |
| Residence: | - |
| Trade of father: | Brick labourer |
| 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:- … John Burke, aged twelve, who had been imprisoned twice, the first time for a month before last Christmas, and the last time the Monday after Easter, for two months said – I was never punished with the strait jacket, but the first time I was punished was by having my bed taken from me till ten o’clock for three nights, and being without a bed at all for three nights more. The last time I had my bed taken from me for a fortnight. The boy in the next cell to mine rapped on the wall. The warder came in and said it was me. Brown and Cotterill took my gruel off me, because my can was a little dirty at the top. They gave me nothing in its place. When my bread was taken from me for three nights I sat on my stool and leaned my head on the table, and slept that way. It was Brown who told me to put my bed outside the cell, but I do not know who it was that kept it.
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