Willie Tear

William Frederick Tear, Washington, DC, April 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, April 1912, Lewis Hine.

If someone saw this photo with no caption and nothing to explain why it was taken, that person might assume that the boy is just riding around in his neighborhood, or waiting for his mother to come out of the store. But the caption is there, and it's apparent why Lewis Hine took it. So whoever sees it might react the way I did when I saw it for the first time. "Where the heck are the parents, and why isn't this poor boy at home?"

I am guessing that most viewers of this photograph will presume that young Willie has a dismal future ahead of him. My research shows that this 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.

Articles are Copyright 2007, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive and The Washington Post. All right reserved. Reprinted with permission from Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Company and the Washington Post.

This apartment building was William Tear's last residence. Photo taken in 2007.

At that point, I lost track of him, until I found his death record. William Frederick Tear died December 28, 1975, in Los Angeles, California. No obituary was available. No relatives were located. But I did obtain his death certificate. He had a heart attack on November 8, 1975, and died 50 days later in the University of Southern California Medical Center. He was cremated on February 2, 1976, after no one claimed the body.

Finally, I was able to locate one of sister Ethel’s sons, Harvey, now 72 years old and living in Maryland. He had never heard of William, who would have been one of his uncles. He told me that his mother seldom mentioned her siblings, but often complained that her father William had deserted the family (apparently after 1920), leaving her mother to raise the children alone. Ethel died in 2003, at the age of 90. She was primarily a housewife, but also worked a while as a clerk at the Hecht Company department store in Washington.

Harvey said that from what he knew, most of the Tear children “drifted around a lot.” He met his Uncle Ralph several times, but knew little about him, other than he never married and died in Washington, DC, in the 1950s. I told him that Albert died in Alameda County in 1967, per Social Security Death Index, and he remembered that.

I told him all I knew about his Uncle William and mailed him a copy of the Lewis Hine photo. At least one family member will now know something about what happened to young Willie.

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