Browne - Tommy - bad boy from Orphanage - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

Tommy Browne is a bad little boy at the Orphan’s Home who is so bad that he will have to be sent to the reform school and that’s all there is about it. Tommy has had a bad influence on the cherubic little orphans at the home and has caused the matron a barrel of trouble. He has flatly refused to say his prayers for six months and recently organized among the orphans a secret order called the N. P. G. (No Prayers Go) Club and had perfected a scheme to murder the matron some night and make off with all the orphans to join Coxey’s army. The other day while the matron was sewing a button on his coat, he tied one end of a string to her belt and the other to the handle of the tea kettle full of boiling water on the stove so that when she started away she pulled the tea kettle off the stove and scalded the cat to death.

Tommy then took the cat out in the yard and forced his little playmates to eat it for roast rabbit. He stole sugar at the table, got up early so he could pour the contents of the water pitcher in his playmates’ shoes, stuffed putty in the key hole of the door where the quinine was kept, gave the little girls balls of soap for candy, put salt in the cream pitcher and the matron’s bed, striped his white pants with ink so he could play he was Ward Burrows in prison, and, in short, committed every crime in the juvenile calendar. Yes, Tommy will have to go to Plainfield. -s