The Daily Dispatch: April 9, 1861., [Electronic resource]

---

---

A Juvenile common drunkard.

--This forenoon the Clerk of the Police Court called for Cornelius Holland, and informed that person that he was charged with being a common drunkard. The spectators looked for Holland, but saw him not. He was too small to be visible above the bar at which he was arraigned. Our reporter peered over the railing and saw a stunted child, eight years old, with a round, red face, and black eyes and hair. Cornelius plead not guilty, and when the evidence of the officer was given in he cross-questioned the officer sharply. "When you saw me drunk, why didn't you arrest me at the time?" The officer said he had carried him into the house repeatedly when he was too drunk to walk. It appears that his boy was one of the crew of young tipplers who collect old junk for the means of gratifying their precociously formed appetite for r. g. rum. The boy in this case was arrested in order that his life might be saved. What kind of liquor sellers have they in South Boston who sell rum to an eight year old drunkard?-- Boston Herald.