Texas School Hard Knocks

Gatesville remained the most brutal of the juvenile prisons in Texas. It was so bad that it had to build a cemetery on its grounds because so many boys were dying in custody. One of the worst cases of this occurred in 1921 when a guard strangled a 15 year old named Del Tim's to death in front of two other boys. Eventually all the stories of abuse led to enough outrage that in 1948 the state legislature appointed a special commission to study these schools.