NO fewer than 22 young Worcester boys were up before the city magistrates two days after Christmas a century ago for a variety of minor offences such as throwing stones, damaging property, petty theft, and playing football in the street on a Sunday.

"Crowquill", in his Journal comment column for this week of 1902, saw it as a worrying spate of youngsters out of control in the city and advocated that all 22 should be been given several strokes of the birch.

"The difficulty of dealing with mischievous boys faced the City Bench on Saturday. Boys will be boys, and boys are wanton animals with reckless disregard of private property.

"Punishment is wholesome for them, but the law places ridiculous limitations upon the discretion of magistrates in the matter of birching.

"Punishment is sometimes wholesome for parents too, but they cannot in every case be held to blame for a mischievous spirit, almost natural to boys, and in cases where the magistrates have not the power to birch, they are left with a very unpleasant alternative.

"To fine poor parents is often a hardship - as in the case of a mother of six, pleading for time to pay, of the father being at work in the stone-breaking yard, and Christmastime, "merry" Christmas, being upon us all. To send boys to prison is worse still, because the dread of the unknown gaol interior is a greater deterrent to youthful offence than fear of detention in a place which has been found not as bad as was thought.

"These were the disagreeable alternatives the city justices had on Saturday. What a pity that the 22 boys who came into the dock could not be birched - all at once."

The Journal reported that most of the boys were fined, while just two sent to prison for a few days.

Even 200 years ago, some boys were seen as a scourge in Worcester. The Journal for this week of 1802 issued this caution: "The tradesmen of this city are warned against permitting boys standing in their windows at night as there are three suspicious young characters now here."