Jane H. Walker Makes a Citizen's Arrest

   ©  Kathy Duncan, 2024

Jane H. Walker was Izannah Walker's sister and was also a dollmaker. Like Izannah, she never married. She maintained her own household in Somerset, Massachusetts after Izannah moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island. She grew grapes, and she was a force to be reckoned with. 

In 1881, at the age of 67, Jane was feeling harassed by young boys who were trespassing on her property and either stealing her grapes or vandalizing her grapevines. Fed up, she captured one of them on her own and held him at her house while waiting for law enforcement to arrive and arrest him. He falsely told her that his name was William Burns in an attempt to deflect his delinquency on an Irish immigrant. Meanwhile, his father showed up and badgered Jane into releasing the boy to him.

There is a lot to unpack here, but not much has changed in 140 years. People are tired of having their property damaged or stolen, young people commit crimes, young people lie and try to deflect blame on someone else, parents enable their children's bad behavior, and immigrants are scapegoats. 

Interestingly, this article contains quite a bit of editorializing. 

A transcript of each portion of the article follows the clipping:

Somerset

Miss J. H. Walker, a highly respectable old lady resident and real estate owner, has been repeatedly annoyed in various ways, for no other reason than to gratify a contemptible spirit of envy. Whenever the authors of this annoyance have been detected, they have humbly begged off from punishment and exposure, or tried to palm themselves off as Irish residents. A few days ago Miss Walker captured one of two boys she discovered among her grape vines, and took him into her house until she could give him into the custody of an officer. When he was asked his name he assumed that of another boy in town - William Burns. 

Pretty soon a gentleman called and requested the release of the culprit. The lady knew him as a near neighbor. She was not disposed to accede to his request, and so denied having the youth, in order that his arrest might serve as a warning to others. But after an urgent pressure the parent was allowed to take his boy home. A brother of this one was the person who escaped, and it is presumed that he notified the father of the other brother's fate.

There have been several cases of a similar kind reported, but nothing has heretofore been said concerning them. The Irish portion of our inhabitants has suffered disagreeably and unnecessarily by complaints about the misconduct of their children, altogether due to the poaching tendencies of the sons of aristocratic families. And yet it is not altogether confined to children, for instances can be related where adults have not scrupled to practice the same fraud.