Playing with Fire: Baby Firebugs in Gilded Age America

Abstract: "Playing with Fire" examines child arsonists in the turn-of-the-century United States. Race, class, and gender often conspired to determine the "ages" of "baby firebugs" and hence their fates. At the same time, however, the disposition of various cases and children's own rationales illustrated the difficulties of distinguishing accidents from deliberate acts, fun from malicious intent, and play from crime. Reform school records and anecdotal accounts suggest that legal authorities and ordinary citizens treated child pickpockets differently than child arsonists. Children played with fire. Theft, however trifling, seemed more purposeful, more indicative of a life of crime.