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| William Frederick Tear, Washington, DC, 1912, photo by Lewis Hine. |
5 yr. old Willie, one of Washington's youngest news-boys. He is a kind
of free-lance, helps other boys out, and roams around the city on his little velocipede, with all the recklessness of extreme
youth. Gets lost occasionally. He was so immature that he couldn't talk plain, and yet he was pretty keen about striking people
for nickels. William Frederick Tear, 490 Louisiana Ave., Washington, D.C. Location: Washington (D.C.), District of Columbia.
It is likely that most viewers
of this photograph will presume that young Willie has a dismal future ahead of him. That presumption apparently turned out
to be true. He left behind few recorded details of his 69 years, but I was able to paste together a pretty good picture of
what happened.
William Frederick Tear was
born in Virginia, on Oct 11, 1906. His father, also William Frederick Tear, was born in England about 1880, and his mother,
Mary, was born around 1879, in Virginia. His father emigrated to the US in 1900. Mary gave birth to Douglas Carter around
1901, by another man, possibly a first husband. She would then marry William. None of the family was recorded in the 1910
census.
In the 1920 census, the Tear
family is living at 716 H. Street, SW, Washington, DC. His father’s occupation is listed as window cleaner. Other occupants
of the home are wife Mary, Douglas Carter, sons William (13), Ralph (9), Albert (7), and Robert (1), and two daughters, Ethel
(8) and Alice (4). Douglas, William, Ralph and Ethel were born in Virginia, the others in Washington, DC.
Separately in the 1920 census,
William is listed as a student at St. Mary's Industrial School, in Baltimore, a Catholic training school for delinquents and
orphans. It is the same school that Babe Ruth attended from 1902 to 1914. It could not be determined if Tear and Ruth attended
at the same time.
William enlisted in the US
Marines Corp on May 22, 1925. Military records show that he was cited numerous times for bad conduct, including desertion,
and served time in military prison at Parris Island, South Carolina. He received a dishonorable discharge in September of
1926.
In 1928, according to the
Washington Post archives, four boys who had run away from their homes were picked up and held by the police, and then
turned over to their parents. Among them were William's brothers, Ralph and Albert, of 15 Riggs Road, NE, Washington. The
police said that the boys had left their homes the day before, and were sleeping in a boxcar just north of the city. They
were in search of food when taken in custody, and were eager to go home.
On October 8, 1928, The
Washington Post reported that Ralph Tear had pleaded guilty to "housebreaking and entering," and was placed
on two years probation.
In the 1930 census, father
William is in Santa Cruz, California, living by himself in a rooming house and working as a clerk in a tailor shop. And young
William, now 24 years old, is an inmate at the federal prison in Fulton County, Georgia. No other members of the Tear family
show up in the 1930 census. William was apparently released from prison not too long after, because on August 26, 1933, he
and brother Ralph were arrested in Ohio. Less than four years later, William was to face more trouble.
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