In re Ferrier

Citations

• 103 Ill. 367
• 1882 Ill. LEXIS 184

Syllabus

<p>1. Industrial schools—act relating thereto is not unconstitutional, as being in restraint of personal liberty. Section 3 of the act entitled “An act to aid industrial schools for girls,” approved May 29, 1879, which provides for the committing to such a school of dependent infant girls who beg or receive alms while selling or pretending to sell any article in public, or who frequent any street, alley or other place for the purpose of begging, or who have no permanent place of abode, proper parental care or guardianship, or sufficient means of subsistence, or who for other cause are wanderers through the streets and alleys or other public places, or who live with or frequent the company of, or consort with, reputed thieves or other vicious persons, or who are found in a house of ill-fame or a poor house, is not unconstitutional, as being in violation of the Bill of Bights in respect to personal liberty.</p> <p>2. Under such act due provision is made for the protection of all just rights, and the institution is not a prison, but a school; and the sending of a young female child there to be taken care of under a proper guardian to be appointed, who otherwise has no one to care for her, is not to be regarded as punishment. The restraint of liberty in such institution is no more than is found in any well regulated school. Such a degree of restraint as is essential to the proper education of a child, is in no just sense an infringement of the inherent and inalienable right to personal liberty.</p> <p>3. The power conferred upon the court court under this act is but of the same character as the jurisdiction exercised by the courts of chancery over the persons and property of infants, having its foundation in the prerogative of the Grown, flowing from its general power and duty, as parens patriœ, to protect those who have no other lawful protector. Such an institution is but an agency of the State for the needful and proper control and care of female infants when found t