Children in Edinburgh playing Pitch and Toss in 1909. Source: National Galleries Scotland.
Alfred Bradley was 14 when he was made homeless after his grandmother died. He was in court the following year for ‘garden robbing’, which was the first of many court appearances. In the newspaper he was described as ‘a young incorrigible’ and ‘a careless looking youth’. He was in trouble a few years later for playing ‘pitch and toss’, a street gambling game. When a policeman tried to arrest him, Alfred bit the policeman’s thumb. Alfred must have been popular as over 100 people gathered to try and rescue him from the policeman.
The offence he was most often arrested for was stealing clothes from washing lines and pawning them for cash. He was in and out of prison eventually getting a seven-year prison sentence with hard labour. The prison records state that he was 4ft 11 and a half inches tall with a stoutish build, had a scar on his right cheek, had lost most of his teeth in his top jaw and that he could read. In between prison sentences, Alfred often stayed in the workhouse where he died at the age of 51. He was buried in an unmarked public grave in the Cemetery.
You can read more about people who died in the workhouse who are buried in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication A Window into the Workhouse.