The present article analyzes records of the Judiciary in the District Court of Bragança Paulista, regarding orphan's tutelage and labor contracts for poor and vulnerable children between 1871 and 1900. It identifies situations involving the exploitation of adolescent and child labor, violence, and mistreatment. It tracks education initiatives which are related to the work relations between children and adolescents and their guardians. Based on Judiciary practices, as orphans were under its jurisdiction, it shows how the access to education by these children was processed, as well as the mechanisms of control of poor children when wage employment arise in Brazil. That was notably the time when these poor and vulnerable children and adolescents started to be observed on more carefully since the belief in the efficiency of providing labor for the poor classes in order to avoid delinquency was related to the discourse on the lack of labore and the conceptions of work developed at the time of abolition of slavery/immigration.
CHILDREN; ADOLESCENT AND CHILD LABOR; VIOLENCE; EDUCATION
