At the beginning of the nineteenth century a child who committed a crime was tried in the same court as an adult. If the judge or magistrate sentenced them to prison, they would be sent to the same prison as adult criminals.

Some campaigners, such as Mary Carpenter, argued that children should be kept away from adult criminals so that they did not learn bad habits from them. She also said that children should be given training and be allowed to play.

Pressure from campaigners led to Parliament passing the Reformatory Schools Act in 1854. The Act allowed reformatory schools to be set up and for them to be officially inspected. Magistrates could send children under the age of 16 to these schools, instead of to prison.

A reformatory school was set up in Newcastle in 1853, just before the Act passed through Parliament. The school was moved to Netherton, near Morpeth, in 1857. In 1933 Netherton became an “Approved School”, which replaced reformatories and industrial schools. Netherton continued to be a residential school for boys well into the 1980s.

A page like this was filled out by the staff at Netherton when a new boy arrived at the school. It includes a lot of information about him, his family and why he had been sent to Netherton.

The top of the page includes personal information, such as name, age (15 years 7 months) and physical appearance (what the boy looked like). Isaac was known by the family names Cohen and Potsheaves. It may have been that his family changed or adapted their name when they came to England.

The middle of the first page (“OFFENCE”) includes the details of his crime: breaking into the shop of J Wardrill and stealing four gents’ watches. It also shows that he had been in trouble before (“Previous convictions”) for stealing money from gas meters. Gas was often used to heat and light people’s homes at this time and houses would often have a meter. Money would be put into the meter to pay for the gas in a “pay-as-you-go” system.

Towards the bottom of the first page, Issac’s religion has been recorded. (“RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION”) The word “Hebrew” has been written down, meaning that Isaac was Jewish. Boys from all over the country were sent to Netherton because it was one of the only reformatories in England to accept Jewish boys. A rabbi came from Newcastle to look after the boys’ religious education.

At the top of the second page is a list of Isaac’s family members, including his mother, father, three brothers and three sisters. From this information, it is possible to find the family on the 1911 census. The census shows that Isaac’s parents, David and Fanny (or Anne), came from Grodno, Russia (now Belarus). All of their children on the census were born in England and so they probably arrived in the country in about 1899.

NRO 00820/B/26 p. 221 Discharge register entry for Isaac Cohen.