In 1871, a boy of eleven was sent to prison in Barnsley for taking eighteen shillings from a pub till. He got a month in Wakefield gaol, then five years in a reformatory. His own father stood in the courtroom and told the magistrates he was beyond his control. So did his father ever get him back?

His name was Fred Watson. Wakefield photographed him at four foot one with a number on his chest, and the reformatory pasted the picture into its admission register. The records then follow him back to his father's forge, through the loss of four of his six children, and into the same grave at Brighouse as his father.

This is his story, told through the records he left behind.