THE JUVENILE COURT CONCEPT IN MISSOURI jurisdiction to remove a child from its own parents if necessary to protect the child and promote its welfare. 7 By an act approved January 17, 1825, the circuit court sitting as a court of chancery was vested with jurisdiction in all causes of divorce, alimony, and maintenance, including the power to enter orders affecting the care, custody, and maintenance of the children involved. 8 JUSTICE OF THE PEACE, PROBATE, AND COUNTY COURT JURISDICTION OVER MINORS-ADOPTION BY DEED Although the jurisdiction of equity may have been sufficiently broad to deal with all problems of minors, the legislature, perhaps prompted by the failure of equity to assert itself, deemed it necessary to delegate portions of this jurisdiction to various other courts. Thus, in 1824, a justice of the peace was authorized to bind a minor, who was found to be a vagrant, as an apprentice until his twenty-first birth-(lay." Certain jurisdiction over classes of minors was also conferred on the probate court, which by an act approved January 17, 1825, had the power to "bind out," as an apprentice or servant, any poor child who was or may be a charge of the county, or a child who begs, or whose parents be-or are charges of the county, or the children of any poor family if "the father is a habitual drunkard, or if there is no father, where the mother is of bad character or suffers her children to grow up in habits of idleness without any visible means of obtaining an honest livelihood .. .""J until such child became twenty-one years of 34. In 1903 the name was changed to "The Missouri Training School for Boys."
