Ledger of Virginia Industrial School for Boys

Unprocessed Material — Flat_Box: ViU2023-0151_001

Identifier: ViU-2023-0151

Staff Only

Content Description

This collection contains a ledger from the Virginia Industrial School for Boys (VISB), which has case histories for 103 boys committed to the school from juvenile courts throughout Virginia in 1925 and 1926. Most of the boys were born between 1909 and 1911, making them around 15 or 16 years old at the time of intake. Each history consists of a form completed by hand and a page of handwritten notes. The documents provide the boys' birth dates and physical descriptions, including notes about their build, complexion, teeth, and other identifying characteristics such as scars. There are also questions about the boys' lives, such as how many years they spent in school, how many have passed since they left, and their current employment. There are also a few questions about their parents, such as their marital status, occupation, and religion. All but eight of the boys here signed their names on the respective forms. The VISB was established as the Laurel Industrial School in 1890 by the Prison Association of Virginia, a private group of citizens seeking to reform the treatment of juvenile offenders. In 1920, it became VISB and moved to Beaumont, Virginia. It was later known as Beaumont School for Boys, the Beaumont Learning Center, and finally, the Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center before being vacated and taken out of service in 2017.