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Title: Tragedies of the White Slave
Author: H. M. Lytle
Release Date: September 22, 2015 [EBook #50034]
Language: English
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_The_ TRAGEDIES OF
THE WHITE SLAVES
[Illustration]
TRUE STORIES EXPOSING METHODS
USED IN TRAPPING INNOCENT GIRLS
Tragedies of the White Slave
True stories of the White Slavery taken from actual life.
Each one dealing with a different method by
which white slavers have lured innocent
victims to destruction.
TEN TRAGEDIES OF TEN GIRLS
The Tragedy of the Want Ad
The Tragedy of the The Theatrical Agency
The Tragedy of the Maternity House
The Tragedy of the Girl with the Hair
The Tragedy of Mona Marshall
The Tragedy of the Little Immigrant
The Tragedy of the Army Lieutenant
The Tragedy of the Young Wife
The Tragedy of the Little Cash Girl
The Tragedy of the Ella Gingles
BY
H. M. LYTLE,
Special Investigator for the Metropolitan Press
THE CHARLES C. THOMPSON CO.
(Not Inc.)
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY
THE CHARLES C. THOMPSON CO.
Contents.
Foreword 3
CHAPTER I.
The Tragedy of the Maternity Home 9
CHAPTER II.
The Tragedy of the Want Ad 23
CHAPTER III.
The Tragedy of the Assignation House 39
CHAPTER IV.
The Tragedy of the Immigrant Girl 48
CHAPTER V.
The Tragedy of the Stage 59
CHAPTER VI.
The Tragedy of the Five Thousand 77
CHAPTER VII.
The Tragedy of the Little Lace Maker
(Ella Gingles' Own Story) 92
CHAPTER VIII.
The First Night 103
CHAPTER IX.
Arrested 117
CHAPTER X.
The Second Orgy 126
CHAPTER XI.
Ella Gingles On Trial (by Hal McLeod
Lytle) 140
CHAPTER XII.
The Return Home 191
Foreword.
The lives of 5,000 young girls are laid upon the altar of lust every
year in the city of Chicago alone.
The insatiable rapacity of man, the lust of the hunt, the demands of
brutish passion ordain it that these 5,000 young innocents be led forth
to the slaughter, annually.
This statement is not a matter of guess. It is the estimate of officers
of the Chicago Law and Order League, the Illinois Vigilance Society,
the police authorities and Assistant State's Attorney Clifford G. Roe.
There are 68,000 women leading a nameless existence in the city of
Chicago alone. This is the police estimate, based upon a census made by
the captains of the different police districts. It includes the women
who live--and die--in the temples of shame on Twenty-second street,
on the Strand in South Chicago, on the West Side, and on Wells street
and vicinity on the North Side. It includes the "street walkers," the
girls who infest such dance halls in Twenty-second street, the women in
private flats, and the mistresses of wealthy men.
The average duration of a woman leading a life of shame is from two to
twelve years, according to Dr. L. Blake Baldwin, city physician. Dr.
Baldwin places his average at four years, basing this upon the life of
the woman in the brothel where the majority of fallen women are to be
found.
Drink, which goes hand in hand with vice, cigarette smoking, various
kinds of "dope," the all night method of living and the daily
vicissitudes of existence are the contributing causes, according to Mr.
Baldwin. But the chief cause of early demise is the ravages of diseases
inseparable from immoral life.
The result is that the market houses are yawning, constantly holding
forth an insatiable maw into which new blood must be poured, new lives
must be thrown, more young innocents must be devoured.
And this is the reason for the existence of this book. If one mother
or father may be warned in time, if one single life may be saved from
the traps men make and the lures they bait for the enslavement of the
flower and innocence of the nation the author will have been well
repaid indeed.
* * * * *
A great many persons are yet skeptical of the existence of an
organized traffic in young girls. If they could have been in the
courts of Chicago their minds would have been disabused of the idea
that organized slavery does not exist in Chicago.--Assistant State's
Attorney Clifford G. Roe.
Within one week I had seven letters from fathers, from Madison,
Wisconsin, on the north, to Peoria, Illinois, on the south, asking me
in God's name to do something to help find their daughters because they
had come to Chicago and disappeared. The mothers, the fathers, even the
daughters must be educated regarding the lures that men set or white
slavery can not be abolished.--Judge John R. Newcomer, of the Municipal
Courts.
This book should go into the homes of every family in this wide nation,
rich and poor, sophisticated and unsophisticated, city homes or country
homes. It is only when parents _realize_ the pitfalls that they will
be able to avoid them.--The Rev. R. Keene Ryan, Pastor of the Garfield
Boulevard Presbyterian Church.
Weakness and lack of understanding appeal to me as the opportunity for
the work of these human vultures. That young women passing the ages
of from 15 to 20 years need more counsel and guidance than many good
mothers suspect.--Judge Richard S. Tuthill, of the Juvenile Court.
The victims of the traffic are first ensnared, then enslaved, then
diseased. Not until honest men take the stand that will result in
the abolition of the segregated districts can this practice of white
slavery be stopped.--The Rev. Ernest A. Bell, Superintendent of the
Midnight Mission and Secretary of the Illinois Vigilance Association.
The recent examination of more than 200 "white slaves" by the office of
the United States district attorney has brought to light the fact that
literally thousands of innocent girls from the country districts are
every year entrapped into a life of hopeless slavery and degradation
because their parents do not understand conditions as they exist and
how to protect their daughters from the white slave traders who have
reduced the art of ruining young girls to a national and international
system.--Hon. Edwin W. Simms, United States District Attorney at
Chicago.
If parents will shut their eyes to this canker that is feeding on the
flower of our nation they may continue to expect their daughters to be
"kidnapped," lost or mysteriously missing.--Arthur Burrage Farwell, of
the Law and Order League.
THE TRAGEDIES OF THE WHITE SLAVES.
CHAPTER I.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE MATERNITY HOME.
A young reporter for a great Chicago newspaper was sent by his city
editor into the heart of the "red light" district to investigate a
murder at one of the city's brothels.
The trail of the story led the reporter into one of the most notorious
dens of the city, the "E---- club." This home of vice is located in
a three-story stone mansion. Around it radiates the elite of the
district. It is owned by two sisters, immensely wealthy, who have made
their fortune through the barter of girls' souls.
A negro butler attired in livery admitted him into the reception room
of this gilded den. Velvet carpets that sank beneath the feet covered
the floors. Massive paintings by old masters were on the walls. The
gilded ceilings radiated the glare of vari-colored lights which studded
it.
From the silver dance-room came the sound of soft music, interspersed
with the discordant laughter of drunken men and girls.
In a few seconds a woman entered the reception room. She was prettily
clad in a flowing silk gown. Her mass of black hair was wreathed about
her head.
As she met the gaze of the reporter she started, and fled, as though
terrified, from the room. The recognition had been mutual.
In the face of the fallen woman the reporter had seen the features of
an innocent girl who had been a playmate of but a few years before.
Her family was wealthy. Her father was one of the most prominent
surgeons in Illinois. In the city in which they lived he had served
several terms as mayor. She had been the belle of the town. Her many
accomplishments and innocence had won her many suitors. But she spurned
them all for the love of her father and mother. She was the only child
in the family. Her every wish and want had been fulfilled.
But a year before the reporter had heard that she had died. The papers
in the town contained articles at the time lamenting her death.
According to the stories, she had been drowned in Lake Michigan while
sailing in a yacht. A body of a girl supposedly that of her's had been
shipped home. There had been a funeral.
Since that time the father and mother had been disconsolate. The memory
of the daughter was never from their minds. They spent the greater part
of the days at the side of the grave in the cemetery. After dusk had
fallen they sat in the pretty boudoir that had been the room of their
child. Not a thing had been touched in the room. The beautiful dresses
and garments that had once been worn by their daughter still were
neatly hung in their places. The little mementoes still lay about the
room. And in the dim light that radiated from a fireplace the father
and mother could picture the face of their daughter, whom they believed
to have been so ruthlessly torn from them by death.
Quickly recovering from the shock, the seeming apparition had given
him, the reporter dashed after the girl.
She ran into a room and attempted to lock the reporter out. He forced
his way in. As he did so, she fell at his feet screaming and pleading.
Her mind seemed to have suddenly become unbalanced.
"Don't tell papa and mamma I'm alive," she shrieked; "they believe me
to be dead and it is better so. I'll kill myself if you tell them."
The reporter could scarcely believe that girl could be the same
innocent, high-minded child he had known but a few months before.
After much persuasion, she was finally calmed. She would not lift her
head or look into her childhood friend's eyes.
"Come and get out of this fearful hole at once," the reporter
demanded, grasping her by the arm.
The crying of the girl ceased. Her muscles grew tense and rigid.
"I will stay here," she said quietly; "stay here until I die. No
pleadings will change me. My mind has been made up for some time. I'm
an animal now. The innocent girl that you once knew is now no part of
me. I'm all that is bad now. When I leave this life, it will be in
death."
"But your father and mother would receive you back--they needn't know
anything of this," pleaded the reporter.
"I'm dead to them and in death I am still pure and innocent in their
eyes. They are happy in their belief," slowly said the girl, her eyes
filling with tears. She paused for some time, a faraway look in her
eyes.
It was as though she were gazing into the past of but a short time
before. Her features assumed those of the innocent girl she had been,
then as she thought they gradually seemed to grow more hardened and
steel-like. Finally, after some moments she broke the silence.
"I will tell you why I am here," she said. "I will tell you why I will
not go back.
"You can remember, not a long time ago, when I was all that was good. I
hardly knew the meaning of a profane word. I was worshiped and petted.
"I have done some good in my life. It was this good and the hope to do
even more that finally led to my ruin. In the convent where I went to
school, we had been taught to be charitable. I was happy in helping the
poor and sick.
"The fact that my father was a physician gave me an inspiration. When
I had reached my twentieth birthday, I decided to learn to be a nurse,
so that I might do more for the poor. In the home town I could not do
this. So I went to a neighboring city and entered a state hospital.
There I worked as a common apprentice nurse for ten months. I did not
receive any pay for my services. I had plenty of money anyway.
"I grew to love one of the physicians. He apparently loved me as
much. My life seemed to be tied up in his. He asked me to marry him.
I was overjoyed at the thought. We were constantly together and I was
radiantly happy.
"One night, he made suggestions to me. He said we would soon be married
and that in view of that, it would not be wrong. I trusted explicitly
in him and believed what he said. Then I fell.
"It is useless for me to try to tell you of the lies, the protestations
of love, the excuses and suggestions he made that caused me to fall.
No one could understand that but me. No one could excuse it but me.
"A short time later I found that I was to become a mother. I was happy
then. I should bear him a child. I told him of this. He suddenly grew
cold in his actions. Then he avoided me. Disheartened I pleaded for him
to marry me. He laughed in my face and told me he had never intended to
do such a thing. I fainted under this torrent of abuse.
"The thought that I had been cast aside nearly cost me my reason. I
knew I could not go home in such a condition. I had heard that in
Chicago maternity hospitals were easy to enter, so one night I packed
some of my clothing and slipping away from the hospital, boarded a
train.
"I was frightened nearly out of my senses at the enormity of my act.
Across the aisle from me in the railroad coach, sat an elderly woman.
Her face seemed kindly. After a few minutes' ride, she smiled at me.
Then when I vainly attempted to smile back, she came over and sat down
beside me.
"She talked very motherly to me. Soon I had told her my whole story.
She was very sympathetic. She said she pitied me in my trouble and
would help me. I clung to her as though she were a mother. After we had
talked some time, she told me that she had a maiden aunt in Chicago at
whose home I could live and that she would see that I received proper
medical attention. I accepted her offer gratefully.
"When we reached Chicago she assisted me with my baggage and into a
waiting cab. For some time we drove about the city.
"At last we arrived at a big stone mansion. It was lighted almost from
top to bottom.
"'Auntie must be entertaining tonight,' laughed the woman. 'We'll go
right in and to our rooms. No one will see us.'
"A negro, attired in livery, came out and carried our baggage in. We
went at once to rooms on the upper floor. I did not know where I was.
I believed what the elderly woman had told me, that I was at the home
of the aunt. It was not until two weeks later that I found out I was in
this den of vice, where I now am.
"For those two weeks I was treated as well as could be wished. Two
elderly women came often to see me and talked pleasantly. A doctor came
and attended me through my illness.
"I can't make you understand the shock that came to me when they told
me that I would have no baby. The man and the two women had attended to
that. My baby was dead. There seemed nothing else to live for.
"One morning when I had nearly recovered, I got out of bed and went to
the door. To my dismay I found that it was locked from the outside.
The windows were also locked. When the women came a short time later I
asked them about it. They merely laughed and gave me no answer.
"It was only a few nights later when I was awakened by the sound of a
man's voice. In the darkness I could see him standing beside my bed.
I screamed and screamed but no one came. I jumped out of bed and ran
to the door. It was securely locked. The man laughed at my efforts to
evade him.
"Finally he pressed a button on the wall. Two women, dressed in short
costumes that barely reached to the knees, came into the room. The man
threw me on a bed and the two women held me.
"After that I was given something to eat. Instantly I seemed bereft of
my senses. It was not until a week later that I became normal again.
It was during that week that my ruin was forever accomplished. Of what
occurred I have but a vague recollection.
"I realized then that I could never return home again. I grew morose
and sullen as I thought. Often I tried to force myself to take my own
life, but the thoughts of my evil deeds kept me from doing so.
"The days that passed were like the fancies of a disordered mind.
Gradually the atmosphere, the viciousness of it seeped through me and
took the place of the innocence, the wifely feeling, the mother love
of which I had been robbed. The process of degradation, of evolution
into accepting life in this prison came about swiftly. I found myself
accepting this home, this place where I might exist.
"You know the verse:
"'Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with its face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.'
"That describes my case. The owners of the place gradually extended my
liberties. I remember the first day that came when they said I might go
out alone. They would trust me to come back.
"I had formulated a plan that morning. In the Chicago papers I had seen
a story telling of the finding of a girl of about my age in the waters
of Lake Michigan, near Lincoln Park. She did not have a coat or hat on
and a portion of her other clothing was missing.
"I went to a spot along the shore, near where the body had been found.
I took off my coat and hat and soaked it in the water. I left a small
pocketbook with my name and a small amount of money inside the coat
pocket. Then I hurried back to this place.
"The clothing was found and turned over to the police. The name and
address were also noted. My parents were notified. They came at once to
Chicago. The body of the girl had been in the water for some time. They
could not identify it but easily identified the clothing.
"The body was taken home. I read of the terrible grief of my parents
with tearful eyes. I read of my own burial. Often I knelt and prayed
for my sorrowing parents.
"Then I knew it was all over. To the world I was dead. To myself my
pure and innocent life was a thing of the past. I had forever cut off
family ties. But to them I would forever be known as the pure child
that they knew and loved.
"I have not associated with the women here any more than I had to. I
have never drank nor smoked cigarettes, despite their attempts to force
me to do so.
"I have tried to imagine myself leading a different life. I have gone
to church and fancied myself clothed with the purity and innocence of
the other days. Perhaps I turned my head to look about me. Perhaps
I heard a smothered exclamation not meant for my ears. Mocking me,
driving me back to a realization of my degradation, would be a
face--the face of a man who had come to the 'E---- Club' in search of a
vent for his beastly desires. He could do what I could not and yet be
respected. When I sought out a place of worship, even he was ready to
point a mocking finger, to leer at me with an insulting smile.
"In the theatres, in the parks, in the shopping districts and on the
streets of the city I have tried, for just a little while, to imagine
myself the girl of the olden days. Always, everywhere, omnipresent has
been the reminder that drove me back to the 'E----' with a sigh of
relief and a sense of refuge. Can you understand?
"I have steeled myself to live this life because there is no other left
to me.
"I have hoped and prayed that I would not live long, that I would grow
ugly in features and a person whom men would shun, but in vain. But I
know that sooner or later my hope will be realized."
"But I can help to save you. I can put you in a position where you can
earn a respectable living and where you will be happy," pleaded the
reporter.
For a time the girl was in deep thought. When she raised her head again
her eyes were wet with tears.
"I couldn't do it. I can never be anything else now," she said. "Were I
to take a position, it would be but a question of time until some man
who had seen me in this place would recognize me. I would be discharged
and driven into even a deeper life of shame.
"It is impossible to even contemplate such a thing.
"When a woman falls, she falls never to rise again. The thoughts of her
evil life are forever a menace to her. They pursue her constantly. She
never can resume her former sphere in life."
"Isn't there anything that I can do to cause you to come with me and do
right?" asked the reporter.
"There is nothing that anyone can do. What I am now I will always be,"
she replied.
"Won't you at least meet me away from this awful place and try to spend
at least part of your evenings in the respectable way to which you were
accustomed?" was asked.
"I will meet you where no one would recognize either you or I," was the
reply. "I would not disgrace you by having anyone know me.
"You will not meet the little girl you knew, though. Henceforth you
must meet a fallen woman, a woman who sells her flesh, pound by pound,
to human vultures. You had best change your mind. For myself, I would
be delighted to be with you, but the old memories are painful. I will
see you but you must never come here for me."
When the reporter left the sin-cursed place, there were tears in his
eyes. To him it was as though he were deserting his own sister to the
ravages of a pack of wolves.
Half a block away from the place he paused in deep thought. Should
he go at once to her parents and tell them of the finding of their
daughter, that she was alive?
He knew they would gladly receive her back, that any and all of her
wrongs would be overlooked. He thought of their great love for her, of
their deep grief in her death.
But as he thought, he could see a fireside in a city but a few hundred
miles distant. Side by side sat a couple. The man was a personage
slightly bent, as though bowed down with some grief in the middle of
life. The woman's hair was tinged with gray. Her motherly face was lit
by a radiant smile, as though she were dreaming of something heavenly.
He could see them clasp hands and sit for hours dreaming of the
happiness of but a few months before. Then the father would rise, and,
walking across the room, caress some tiny trinket, such as gladdens
the heart of a girl. He would pick up a picture, that of a beautiful,
laughing girl, radiant in the innocence of the unknowing girl. Long he
would gaze at it. Then imprinting a kiss on the face of the picture,
he would lay it carefully back in its place. They were happy in the
thought that their child was in a better world--of that fact they had
no doubt.
The reporter's mind was quickly made up.
"It is better so," he half muttered. "It is better so."
Slowly he retraced his steps past the den where he had found her. An
automobile had just come to a stop at the curb. Several well dressed
men, in the last stages of intoxication, staggered from the car.
Swearing and cursing, they mounted the steps of the house. The door was
opened to admit them. From the house came the wild scream of a drunken
woman mingled with the coarser yells of drunken men.
Then the door closed.
CHAPTER II.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE "WANT AD."
In April, 1909, a peculiarly worded advertisement appeared in the
personal columns of the Chicago Daily News and the Chicago Tribune. It
was worded as follows:
TRAVELING COMPANION: Widow preparing for extended tour of Europe
wants to engage young lady as traveling companion and secretary. Must
be young, beautiful, fascinating and accomplished. All expenses and
suitable salary. Z 14, Tribune.
The advertisement was what is known in newspaper parlance as a "blind"
or keyed ad. It did not give any street address, letters of application
being sent to the newspaper and there held for the advertiser.
A young Chicago girl read the advertisement and answered it. In her
letter of application she said that she had been called beautiful by
her friends, that she spoke several languages, that she was convent
bred and that she had previously traveled extensively. She also stated
her age, which was 22.
The girl inclosed her address in the letter and said that, if
considered favorably, she would be pleased to call upon the "widow."
The young Chicago girl was all that she declared herself to be. Her
beauty was a matter beyond dispute. Her charm of manner and her
accomplishments were on a plane with her innocence and purity.
The day following the mailing of the letter a caller was announced at
the young lady's home. The caller was an elderly woman. She was dressed
in black. Her adornment was rich. It bespoke an apparent command of
wealth. The woman's language and general demeanor was that of marked
social standing. She gave her name as "Schwartz."
To the young girl she made known the fact that she was the authoress
of the advertisement which the young lady had answered in the papers.
She said that her home was in southern California. She said that her
husband had been a very wealthy resident of California and that most
of her life had been spent in her own home. She said her husband had
died a few months before, leaving her alone with no relatives and
practically no friends in the world.
"I have always been a home body," she said. "My life was wrapped up in
my home and my husband. When he died there seemed nothing else on earth
to live for. God did not see fit to bless us with children. The death
of my husband left me prostrated. The first illness of my life came
then. Doctors told me that unless I sought a change in travel that I
might drag out many long years alone as an invalid.
"I have all the money I know what to do with. When the physicians told
me to leave the scene of my sorrows, and to leave at once, I packed
hurriedly and departed from Los Angeles. I have had no time to think
until I reached Chicago.
"Now that I am here I have realized that I must have a companion for
reasons that you can very easily understand. I do not want an old
person about me. It was the thought of the mental diversion that caused
me to advertise for a young and vivacious girl. At the same time I must
have some one who knows how to travel, how to attend to the endless
details that travel involves. That is why your letter came to me as a
godsend."
The widow wiped her eyes softly with a bordered handkerchief. To the
innocent young girl she seemed the picture of grief. A little while was
passed in conversation of a general nature. As the widow rose to go she
said, "I like you. You seem to me the ideal of such a companion as I
would have. The only question to be settled is whether or not you will
like me.
"If you will come with me as my little daughter I can assure you
that you will want for nothing. I will dress you as I would my own
daughter. We shall visit the world. I have already prepared to engage
passage for Europe and desire to sail Saturday, four days from today.
"In order that you may satisfy yourself as to whether or not you will
like me I want you to call at my hotel tonight and take dinner with me.
I am living at the Arena hotel, 1340 Michigan avenue. A quiet, retired
little place."
"I will be delighted," said the girl. "I don't think that there is
any question as to whether or not I will like you. You have charmed
me already. I am alone in Chicago. The only relative I have here is
my brother. He will be pleased I know to hear that there is such a
pleasant occupation in store for me."
The widow paused in her going, as women do. The conversation prattled
on. The girl spoke of her brother and, before she knew it, she was
saying:
"I never take any steps without consulting him. He knows so much. I
would love to bring him with me to meet you tonight, if you wouldn't--"
Her sentence was arrested by the cloud that passed over the widow's
face. It was a look, sharp, keen, bitter, hard as a look can be. Even
the girl, unwise as she was in the study of human nature and the ways
of the world, felt an intuitive thrill that bordered on suspicion. She
didn't finish her sentence exactly as she had meant to. Instead, she
said: "In fact my brother would hardly let me go, you know, without
first meeting you himself and talking with you. You can understand."
Quickly as it took to say it, the woman in black recovered her
self-composure. Before the girl had finished she was all asmile.
"You dear child," she said, holding out her hand, "I'm so glad to hear
you say that. Indeed, I couldn't think of taking you away from him
without having him feel certain in his heart that it would be for your
good. I'd love to have him call with you tonight. You'll both dine with
me, of course. Do you remember my address?"
"Why, no, I--"
Again a peculiar look came over the widow's face. This time it was not
hard, not sharp, not of dismay nor apprehension, but a sly, fox-like,
satisfied smile that the girl afterwards remembered and understood.
"I'll just write it down for you," said the widow. "I'll give you the
street number, too, so that you won't forget. Pardon me, I haven't a
card."
The girl produced a slip of paper and a lead pencil. On the card the
widow wrote:
"HOTEL IROQUOIS, 3035 Michigan avenue."
And then Mrs. Schwartz departed.
When the girl's brother arrived at home an hour or so later he found a
sister bounding with joy, bubbling with excess of spirits.
The brother was a man of the world. He knew, as a cosmopolitan must
know, of the guile and trickery and fraud and deceit that a great city
contains. Yet, when the girl told him the story of the California widow
and her desire to hire a traveling companion at an enormous salary, he
doubted it not. His spirits were equally as high as his little sister's
when he dressed for the trip to the Iroquois hotel. It was a smiling
young couple that tripped into the lobby of the hotel an hour or so
later and asked the clerk to notify Mrs. Schwartz that her guests were
awaiting her pleasure.
"Schwartz?" said the clerk, as he glanced over the room book a second
time. "No such person of that name here. Sure you got the name right?"
The girl produced the slip of paper in the widow's own handwriting:
"Margaret Schwartz,
Iroquois hotel, 3035 Michigan avenue."
"Maybe we've transcribed the name wrong from the register," said the
clerk. "Where is she from?"
"Los Angeles, California," said the girl.
"Nobody been here from Los Angeles since December, when we put in this
new register," said the clerk after running over the pages.
The tears that came to the young girl's eyes were tears of
mortification, of bitter dismay. Her only thought was that she had been
made the victim of some peculiar person's idea of a practical joke.
It was not until the two were back in their own apartments that the
girl remembered vaguely the conversation of the widow and the woman's
peculiar starts.
"Charlie," she said to her brother, "that woman told me a different
hotel at first. It was the Aree--, Areen--, the Arena hotel, that she
told me first. She asked me to go there first. She CHANGED THE NAME
WHEN I TOLD HER I WOULD BRING YOU WITH ME!"
"Hell!" said the brother. And there was a look on his face such as Cain
must have worn when he committed the first murder.
"Why?" you ask, in astonishment. The answer is to be found on the
police blotters of the Harrison street station.
The Arena hotel, at Thirteenth and Michigan, is the most notorious,
the most terrible assignation house in the city of Chicago. When
honest men are in bed the red lights of the Arena glare onto the
boulevard like the bloodshot eyes of a devouring dragon. The gilded
sons of fortune tear up before its yawning doors in their high
powered motor cars. The keys to the doors were thrown away long ago.
Without it is dismal and somber. Within it is pallid with the erotic
gleam of many incandescents. Its music is the popping of champagne
corks, the laughter of wine debauched women, the raucous roars of the
huntsmen--huntsmen whose sole sport is the slaughter of the innocent,
whose only game is the chastity of the maiden. A ten dollar bill is
necessary for the purchase of the meanest private dining room in the
Arena for a night of revelry. There is not a private dining room in the
place without a bedroom in comfortable proximity.
The hoi polloi, the common herd, is not admitted at the Arena. To enter
there you must be known, and you must be known as a spender.
The price of food is treble that of any other place. The cost of
liquors is double that of many. The Arena is the sporting ground of the
rich. And sport in the Arena comes high.
The brother of the young girl in question determined to probe the widow
and her mystery to the bottom. He determined, in the first place, to
give her the benefit of doubt despite his own convictions. He went to a
telephone and called the Arena hotel. He asked for "Mrs. Schwartz." A
woman answered the call.
"This is Mr. ----," he said. "I believe you called upon my sister
today."
"What is that?" the woman's voice answered. "Who are you? You must be
mistaken. Who do you think you are talking to?"
"Mrs. Schwartz, isn't it?"
There was a moment of hesitation. The man imagined it a moment of
confusion. And then the voice answered: "Oh, no, this is Miss Gartz.
You are talking to the wrong person." A mocking laugh and a click of
the receiver announced to the man that he had been rung off.
He called up the Arena again. He asked for Mrs. Schwartz. He was told
that there was no such person there. He asked the clerk for Miss Gartz
again. The man was sorry, but Miss Gartz had just left. Repeated
telephone calls for both Mrs. Schwartz and Miss Gartz were answered in
succeeding days with the information that there were no such persons
there. Miss Gartz was not on the hotel register. Neither was Mrs.
Schwartz.
The brother of the young Chicago girl went to the offices of the
Chicago Tribune and the Daily News and asked for the name of the woman
who inserted the "Traveling Companion" advertisement. He was told that
the papers were sorry, but that would be impossible. The clerks who
had charge of the want ads were under bonds to divulge no information
regarding blind advertisements. They could not tell who inserted
them, anyway, as no names were taken. The letters when received by
the newspapers were held until the advertisers called for them. The
newspapers could not maintain the integrity of their advertising
columns if they asked impertinent questions of every advertiser.
The newspaper men were sorry. No one regretted the creeping into their
columns of such matter so much as they. Both papers employed detectives
to scrutinize the want columns and to hunt down and expurgate such
advertising if the least possible suspicion was attached to it, but
many want ads were so cleverly and innocently worded that they would
creep in despite every possible precaution that might be taken.
The young man employed detectives himself. He went to a large agency
and told the manager the circumstances. Hardened as he was through
constant association with crime and its varied phases, the manager of
the agency winced when the story was finished.
"You've saved your sister from a living hell," said the crime expert.
"You've saved her from the most terrible spider that ever wove a
net for the accomplishment of ruin. 'Mrs. Schwartz' the widow, is a
procuress--the most clever and fiendish procuress known to us. She
works under a hundred aliases. So keen is she, so clever in her plots
to bring about the ruin of young girls, that we can not cope with her.
She is a rich woman. Every dollar that she has made represents a soul
blackened, an innocent metamorphosed into a drug sotted, degraded
creature of the red lights.
"Your sister is not the only girl that advertisement was meant for. It
probably has already written the ruin of a score of beautiful young
innocents. It was a lure. A lure only. There was no trip to Europe.
There was no trip planned to any place except a house in Twenty-second
street or the private chambers of some wealthy libertine.
"Mrs. Schwartz must have received many hundred answers to that
advertisement from young girls all over the city--even out of the city.
The glamour of a trip to Europe, a salary to tour the world, would turn
any young girl's head. The wording of the advertisement would arouse no
fears or suspicions in the mind of even a worldly wise person.
"When Mrs. Schwartz called upon your sister and proposed that she
take dinner with her at her hotel she wanted the girl to go alone.
When the girl accepted, Mrs. Schwartz named the Arena because she
could accomplish her purpose there. It was the after-thought of the
girl's that saved her and covered Mrs. Schwartz with confusion. She
wrote down the name of the Hotel Iroquois for the express purpose of
destroying the recollection of the Arena in the girl's mind. The Hotel
Iroquois is a quiet family hotel of good reputation.
"Mrs. Schwartz, as she calls herself, knew that the game was up when
your sister mentioned you. Daring and bold as she is, she knows better
than to try her wits with a man.
"Had the girl accepted the invitation without mentioning your name
the stage would have been set for her reception at the Arena. I doubt
if the proprietors of the place would have known anything about this.
The Arena is an assignation house, not a brothel. Had the girl gone to
the Arena alone she would have been sent to the apartments which Mrs.
Schwartz would have taken for her reception. She would have been plied
with flattery, smothered with blandishments. Her little head would have
been turned with compliments. At the psychological instant dinner would
have been served. Dinner would include wine. Did the girl refuse to
touch wine despite the subtle invitations and arts of the widow, her
food and her water would have been 'doctored.'
"Mrs. Schwartz is an adept in the gentle art of administering drugs. In
less than an hour the innocent child would have been in the throes of
delirium, wild, drunk, robbed of her morality through the insidiousness
of the widow's dope.
"Then the man would have been introduced. The scene would have changed
from the little private dining room to the adjoining bedroom."
The young man shuddered, and shut his eyes as if to close out the
picture. The big detective went on, mercilessly:
"The widow Schwartz and her male accomplice would have rejoiced in
their triumph as the drugged innocent was robbed of her chastity.
"Give the widow Schwartz two hours and the end would have been written.
Then to call a cab, carry the unconscious child out of the Arena,
bundle her off to the market place and sell her for one hundred--two
hundred--five hundred--"
"Stop!" said the young man.
After an interval he said, "I put my possessions, such as they are, at
your disposal. I want you to trap this woman. I want you to catch her.
Surely you can--"
"Catch her? Maybe. We'll try." The detective pressed a button.
"Send in Miss B----," he said.
A young woman returned with the messenger. She did not look like
a detective. A young girl she was, of good figure, of pleasant
countenance. Her eyes were large and striking. The detective held out
a copy of the "Traveling Companion" want ad for her perusal.
"Miss B----," he said, "the woman who inserted that advertisement is
a procuress. The ad is a lure. Will you be willing to take this case?
If so, I want you to write an answer on delicate stationery. Give your
address as your home. Say that you are 'convent bred,' beautiful, alone
in the world through a tragedy that wiped out both your relatives and
your fortune, that you are young, talented, a mistress of repartee,
anything that will tantalize that woman and convince her. Then, if the
trout takes the fly, you will have to go to this woman's apartments
alone, let her drug you and trust to us to be on hand for the climax. I
do not ask you to take this case unless it is of your own volition."
The girl hesitated. When she answered it was to say that she would not
only take it, but, were it necessary, she would take it without pay.
"I will inclose my photograph with the letter," she said. "My
photographs make me appear far more beautiful than I really am."
Both letter and photograph were mailed. To make sure as to whether or
not it was too late the detectives called up the newspapers and were
told that the advertisement was "paid in advance to run until Saturday."
The letter, a cunningly and alluringly worded missive, was mailed
to the newspaper office. The photograph, which betokened a ravishing
little beauty, was inclosed. Shadow men were posted at the newspaper
offices to follow the woman when she called for her mail.
Wednesday passed. Thursday, Friday and Sunday came with no response.
At the newspaper offices the publishers said there were more than 200
letters awaiting the pleasure of the woman who wanted a "traveling
companion." Yet the advertiser neglected to call for her mail.
When convinced that there would be no answer the woman operator went
to the Arena to call for Mrs. Schwartz. She was told that there was no
such person there.
The wary old spider, bold enough when maneuvering the enslavement of
innocent girls, had fled to cover at the first alarm.
"We'll have to give it up," said the detective to the young man. "She's
skipped to different quarters. She's scheming out some new bait.
Schwartz her real name? She probably has a thousand names. A different
alias for every girl she marks as a victim."
Do you want to investigate this story for yourself? Do you want
corroborative evidence? The writer of this book has affidavits from the
principals as to its truth. The want columns of any great metropolitan
daily will supply material for your investigations. Look for the
"chorus girls wanted" ads. Look for the "roommates" ads. Peruse the
personal advertisements. Look through the column headed "Wanted, Female
Help, Miscellaneous." Once in a while you'll read an innocent little
paragraph that is sending young virgins to the slaughter pens and the
slave marts. Mrs. Schwartz is not the only woman in the business.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE ASSIGNATION HOUSE.
Her name can be read a quarter of a mile away from the big electric
signs in front of a Broadway theater today. A year ago it was
emblazoned from the signboards of a Chicago amusement place. A few
years before that it was hardly known outside the little Springfield
cottage of the maiden lady with whom she made her home. Truth to
tell, she doesn't know her real name, and the title she goes by as a
theatrical star is the only one she has. For she is an orphan girl and
she was taken to rear by the two elderly maiden ladies in Springfield,
Illinois, when she was a cooing, gob-gobbing baby in an orphan asylum.
But that, as Kipling says, has nothing to do with this narrative.
If you are fortunate enough to enjoy the hospitality of her
dressing-room, between the acts, you will notice the loving tones
she uses in addressing her maid. An oldish woman is the maid, whose
face betokens fading beauty, whose supple limbs echo of some stage
experience of bygone days.
And if you are of that rare type that begets ready confidence the maid
will tell you the story as it is set down here:
"Yes, I was a show girl myself," says the maid, "and I wasn't any
ham-fatter, either, although I'm broken down now and worth nothing save
as a mother to 'Madge.' I lost my ambition long ago. I haven't any now
save to see my mistress the greatest leading lady in the land, which
she will be if the gracious Master of our destinies spares her long
enough.
"It's strange how the fates threw us together. You may have wondered
why she treats me like a sister actress and an equal, and why I never
say, 'Yes, ma'am,' and, 'No, ma'am,' to her. But God's good to me and
He put it in my way to bring her to what she is today instead of being
one of those poor beings what's referred to as 'white slaves' in the
papers, bless your soul.
"She ain't been on the stage long. But she's made good use of every
hour since she's been in the business. She ain't at all like these
lobster-loving, champagne-sipping ones you read about. Not a bit of it.
See them pictures?"
The maid pointed to a group of photographs hanging 'round the room.
Remarkable they were, in that every picture bore the shining face of a
Madonna, a mother and a babe.
"That's the kind of a girl Madge is. Loves babies, dreams about 'em,
has but one ideal, and that to have a little home of her own and a
group of prattlers. She'll have 'em, too, and she'll quit this business
if she ever finds a man in this world good enough for her, which there
ain't.
"Lord bless me, how it was I found her. She didn't know anything
outside of Springfield and the legislature and 'Uncle Dave,' who was
a member of the senate, or something, and who boarded with the maiden
ladies when the legislature sat. Uncle Dave was called uncle chiefly
because he wasn't. He was a big, fat man with a hollow talk like
yelling in a rain barrel and a laugh that shook his balloon style
figure like a dish of jelly. Seemed to be a pretty fine specimen of
an old gentleman. Used to play with Madge and tease her and chuck her
under the chin and give her the kind of advice you read about in the
Old Woman's Journal.
"So when the day came that the stock investments the old ladies had
made went bust and the two dears cried and Madge made 'em 'fess up that
there wasn't enough to feed three mouths now, not to speak of two,
Madge just up and told 'em that she was coming to Chicago to earn her
own living. She wasn't going to be any burden. And she done it. She
started instanter. Uncle Dave said he'd look out for her--he lives in
Chicago. And, sure enough, he was there to meet her at the train when
it reached the depot.
"Madge, the little dear, didn't know enough to ask a policeman. She
wouldn't have known what to do if it wasn't for Uncle Dave. He just
bundled her into a cab and gave an order and then he told her that
he was taking her to a nice place at his hotel which he had fixed up
for her. And he took her to a place on Wabash avenue and he ordered
something that was brought up by a nigger. And he told her to drink
it--she who didn't know whisky or dope from lemon pop.
"And then the old bugger sits right down and says they must write a
letter to Madge's aunts and tell them how nice she is fixed and how
they mustn't worry about her being 'lost in the great city,' or words
to that effect. And Uncle Dave puts in something about getting her a
nice position which will keep her very busy and they mustn't worry if
she doesn't write every day.
"He goes out to mail the letter, and Madge lies down, because her head
gets dizzy. And when she wakes up it's dark and she feels so funny.
Then the little dear remembers that she's got to be brave and mustn't
get lonely or homesick, even if the beautiful big room she's got
doesn't seem so snug and cozy as her little dormer bedroom under the
roof in the cottage at home.
"So she lets down her beautiful golden hair and starts to sing. And
me, what's been an old sport and no good to nobody, myself included
most of all, is in that same hotel. I'm not making any excuses for
my presence. But when I hears that golden voice floating through the
corridors of that den of iniquity I just ups and chokes plumb up, and
not thinkin' of the proprieties or anything else, I just beats it to
that door and looks for the owner of the voice.
"And when I sees that beautiful baby girl, her red hair hanging to the
floor, her big eyes lookin' at me so innocent-like, I ups and puts it
to her straight.
"'F'r God's sake,' says I, 'child, what are you doing here?'
"'Minding my own business,' she should have said. But she ain't got
that kind of a heart in her. Instead she ups and tells me in the most
innocent way about Uncle Dave and Springfield and the two maiden aunts
what weren't aunts at all, but just foster mothers to one child. And
she tells me how Uncle Dave has brought her to this lovely place to
live and is going to get her a job.
"'Job, hell,' I busts out, and she blushes and looks scared. Don't you
know this is the ---- hotel, the most terrible assignation house in
this big, rotten old burg, where other girls like you, Margaret Burkle,
for instance, were taken by designing old villains, kidnapped, enslaved
and robbed of their virtue and their innocence?'
"At that she looks bewildered, as if she don't understand, and I didn't
have the nerve to draw a map for her, knowin' as I did that I might
have a mess of lively young hysteria on my hands. But I just puts my
hand on her head and tells her to 'Never mind,' and then I slips out
and shuts the door.
"I calls a bellboy who has got some money in tips for drinks and other
things from my room and I asks him to slip down to the office and see
who's registered for room 346. I knew I couldn't find out, as the foxy
proprietors of this rotten old dump don't keep a regular book register,
but a card index, so that they can tear up a card easy and destroy it
in case any angry husband or irate wife tries to drag them into the
divorce courts with evidence.
"The boy beats it downstairs and comes back in double quick time, owin'
possibly to some extent to the big four bit piece I slipped into his
hand. I waits for him to say something, and when he said it I wouldn't
have had to ask him, for I knew it in advance.
"'It's John Brown and wife,' he tells me, winkin' solemn and wise-like.
"'That'll do for you,' I tells him. Then I don't waste no time, but
jump into my clothes and beat it for that little girl with the auburn
hair.
"'You come with me--pack up an' git,' I tells her.
"'Why, what, but Uncle Dave--'
"'T'ell with Uncle Dave,' says I, not feeling sanctimonious; 'hustle up
now.'
"The little dear looks kind of bewildered, but I'm feelin' so proud and
bully in my heart to see that she's trustin' me and doin' as I say. I
bundles her out of the dump fast as I can do it and just as we reaches
the door up rushes a big, fat, apoplectic old Santy Claus and blusters:
"'Here, you, where you going with that girl?'
"'Say, you cradle robbing old pork barrel, back stage for you in a
hurry or I'll sic the dangle wagon onto you. Skidoo now and no back
talk, or I'll read about you in the morning papers with great eclat,' I
says.
"He does a little Swiss yodle or something back in his throat and then
he notices a big boy in a blue suit swingin' a piece of mahogany comin'
our way and he don't stop to tip his hat.
"The little dear don't understand it all, but she's bright, if
unsophisticated, and I could have just hugged her right there on the
street for trusting me in comparison to him, as smug and sleek as
Father O'Hara, though that's as far as the comparison goes.
"I takes the little darling over to the North Side with me to the home
of a fine little actor and his wife, who are more for real home than
they are for the gay life. And they don't ask no questions, but just
take her right in to their hearthside.
"Little Madge was too proud for them, though, even if she had been an
orphan and allowed herself to be given a home when she was too small to
work and didn't know how to beg, much less spurn any charity.
"She goes out every day to look for work. She don't find anybody that
wants to hire a girl in a made-over alpaca and clodhopper shoes, though
her form and figure is something you don't see in them automobiles that
whizz up and down on the boulevards.
"She tries to get into a show company, being of that temperament and
having a real voice, and she has some narrow escapes from bumping up
against fake booking agencies that would have sold her into the same
kind of a gilded palace of sin Uncle Dave had cooked up for her.
"One day, when she's walking on State street, so shoddy that her little
bare feet are touching the pavement through the holes in her soles, she
sees a big sign and the wigs in the windows of Burnham's hair store.
"She goes in there. A clerk steps up to her, kind of smart-like, and
she almost bowls him over. She just reached up, pulls out a couple of
pins, takes off her hat and down drops a regular Niagara of Titian
tinted tresses.
"'How much for this?' she asks him.
"He just gasps and goes back to tell it all to Mr. Burnham, and that
individual comes out and dickers with her right then and there for the
purchase of her crown of glory.
"She got sixteen dollars an ounce--a big, fat bank roll. She reinvests
some of it for enough false hair to make her look all right and then
she goes over to one of the big stores and buys the kind of clothes
that nobody knows how to wear like her.
"It's the most stunning little beauty in the world that comes home that
night. With her clothes and her beauty she don't have no trouble at all
to make an engagement. Those two maiden aunts are living in a little
bungalow that she's built for them out in a suburb of Chicago today;
and me--I'm on the job right here just as you see me.
"Uncle Dave? He turned up--not so many days ago. And he has the
pneumogastric to try to chuckle her under the chin just like he used to
in Springfield. And she don't say a word.
"She just turns white as a bit of powdered chalk. I catches her as she
keels over. I holds her with one hand. With the other I sticks a hatpin
into Uncle Dave where it will do the most good."
CHAPTER IV.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE IMMIGRANT GIRL.
In the musty old records of United States District Attorney Edwin W.
Sims, in the federal building, is written the story of the tragedy of a
little Italian peasant girl.
The story is similar in many details to the stories told to Mr. Sims
and his assistant, Harry Parkin, by more than 200 black-haired,
sloe-eyed beauties from sunny Italy. They had all been imported,
brought through the underground railroad of the white slaver, over the
Canadian border, down the St. Claire river, through the great lakes and
into Chicago.
Whether these hunters of the innocent ply their awful calling at home
or abroad, their methods are much the same--with the exception that the
foreign girl is more hopelessly at their mercy.
The story of the tragedy of this little Italian peasant girl, who
helped her father till the soil in the vineyards and fields near
Naples, is but one of many of similar character, but it is expressive.
She was a beautiful little creature. Her form was that of a Venus--her
great mass of black hair hung in a dense cloud from her shapely head.
One might picture her, before she was enticed into the terrible life of
shame, as a little queen among the women of her race.
Yet when she was brought into the district attorney's office,
having been one of a number of aliens captured in a raid by federal
authorities on immoral dives in South Chicago, she was a mass of scars.
Her eyes had lost their deep expressive quality. Her nerves seemed to
be wrecked.
When she was brought into what the sensational newspapers would call
the "sweat box" it was clear that she was in a state of abject terror.
She stoutly maintained that she had been in this country for more than
three years and that she was in a life of shame from choice and not
through the criminal act of any person.
She attempted to tell how she had come to this country alone, but was
unable to tell the name of the steamship on which she had crossed the
ocean or how she had reached Chicago. In broken English she said that
she had been in a house of ill repute in New York before coming to
Chicago and that she had received the scars on her face through an old
injury that had happened years before.
Assistant District Attorney Parkin, however, was not convinced. He
asked her several questions in quick succession. To all of them she
quickly answered "three years."
This is the length of time immigrants must be in this country before
they may be picked up and deported as aliens.
It was this answer that convinced him that the girl had been cowed
into submission and "schooled" by her procurers under threats. It was
through this answer that the white slavers rested their hope that
the girl's story would be believed and that they would be safe from
criminal prosecution.
Soon, however, the assistant district attorney convinced her that he
and his associates were her friends and protectors and that their
purpose was to punish those who had profited by her ruin and to send
her back to her Italian home with all her expenses paid; that she was
under the protection of the United States and was as safe as if the
King of Italy should take her under his royal care and pledge his word
that her enemies should not have revenge upon her.
Then she broke down and related her awful narrative. That every word of
it is true no one could doubt who saw her as she told it.
A "fine lady," who wore beautiful clothes, came to where she lived
with her parents. She made friends with every one. Money seemed of no
object to her. She lavished it upon the young girls of the district
and flattered them. She told the young immigrant girl that she was
uncommonly pretty and professed a great interest in her. Such
flattering attentions from an American lady, who wore clothes as fine
as those of the Italian nobility, could have but one effect on the mind
of the simple little peasant girl and her still simpler parents. Their
heads were completely turned and they regarded the American lady almost
with adoration.
Very shrewdly the woman did not attempt to bring the little girl back
with her, but held out the hope that some day a letter might come
with money for her passage to America. Once there she would become
the companion of her American friend and they would have great times
together.
Of course, in due time, the money came--and the $100 was a most
substantial pledge to the parents of the wealth and generosity of the
"American lady." Unhesitatingly she was prepared for the voyage which
was to take her to the land of happiness and good fortune. According
to the arrangements made by letter the girl was met at New York by two
"friends" of her benefactress, who attended to her entrance papers and
took her in charge. These "friends" were two of the most brutal of all
the white slave drivers who are in the traffic. At this time she was
about sixteen years old, innocent and rarely attractive for a girl of
her class, having the large, handsome eyes, the black hair and the
rich olive skin of a typical Italian.
Where these two men took her she did not know--but by the most violent
and brutal means they quickly accomplished her ruin. For a week she
was subjected to unspeakable treatment and made to feel that her
degradation was complete and final.
And here let it be said that the breaking of the spirit, the crushing
of all hope for any future save that of shame, is always a part of the
initiation of a white slave. Then the girl was shipped to Chicago,
where she was disposed of to the keeper of an Italian dive of the
vilest type. On her entrance here she was furnished with gaudy dresses
and wearing apparel for which the Keeper of the place charged her $600.
As is the case with all new white slaves, she was not allowed to have
any clothing which she could wear upon the street.
Her one object in life was to escape from the den in which she was held
a prisoner. To "pay out" seemed the surest way, and at length, from her
wages of shame, she was able to cancel the $600 account. Then she asked
for her street clothing and her release--only to be told that she had
incurred other expenses to the amount of $400.
Her Italian blood took fire at this and she made a dash for liberty.
But she was not quite quick enough and the hand of the oppressor was
upon her. In the wild scene that followed she was slashed with a razor,
one gash straight through her right eye, one across her cheek and
another slitting her ear. Then she was given medical attention and the
wounds gradually healed, but her face is horribly mutilated, her right
eye is always open and to look upon her is to shudder.
When the raids began she was secreted and arrangements made to ship her
to a dive in the mining regions of the west. Fortunately, however, a
few hours before she was to start upon her journey the United States
marshals raided the place and captured herself as well as her keepers.
To add to the horror of her situation she became a mother. The awful
thought in her mind, however, is to escape from assassination at the
hands of the murderous gang which oppressed her.
This is only one of a score of similar cases discovered by the
authorities.
It is only necessary to say that the legal evidence thus far collected
establishes with complete moral certainty these awful facts: That
the white slave traffic is a system--a syndicate which has its
ramifications from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific ocean, with
"clearing houses" or "distributing centers" in nearly all of the
larger cities; that in this ghastly traffic the buying price of a young
girl is $15 and that the selling price is generally about $200--if the
girl is especially attractive the white slave dealer may be able to
sell her for $400 or $600; that this syndicate did not make less than
$200,000 last year in this almost unthinkable commerce; that it is a
definite organization sending its hunters regularly to scour France,
Germany, Hungary, Italy and Canada for victims; that the man at the
head of this unthinkable enterprise is known among his hunters as "The
Big Chief."
Also the evidence shows that the hirelings of this traffic are
stationed at certain ports of entry in Canada where large numbers of
immigrants are landed to do what is known in their parlance as "cutting
out work." In other words, these watchers for human prey scan the
immigrants as they come down the gangplank of a vessel which has just
arrived and "spot" the girls who are unaccompanied by fathers, mothers,
brothers or relatives to protect them. The girl who has been spotted
as a desirable and unprotected victim is promptly approached by a man
who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good
wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the man. Most
frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or
employment in a candy shop or factory.
The object of the negotiations is to "cut out" the girl from any of
her associates and to get her to go with him. Then the only thing is
to accomplish their ruin by the shortest route. If they cannot be
cajoled or enticed by promises of an easy time, plenty of money, fine
clothes and the usual stock of allurements--or a fake marriage--then
harsher methods are resorted to. In some instances the hunters really
marry the victims. As to the sterner measures, it is, of course,
impossible to speak explicitly beyond the statement that intoxication
and drugging are often used as a means to reduce the victims to a state
of helplessness and sheer physical violence is a common thing.
When the United States authorities some time ago raided the French
resorts on the south side in search of foreign born victims of the
slave trade, some of the most palpable of slavery tactics were
discovered.
"Not one woman in one of these prominent resorts was found who could
speak English," said Assistant United States Attorney Parkin. "But in
their own tongue everything said by them showed long drilling as to
answers that should be made to inquiries. Ask any one of these women a
sudden question in English and her reply to anything asked would be
'five years,' the term of residence in the United States that would
prevent deportation.
"The typical story of the women was of having come to New York about
four years ago as companions or servants in the family of well to do
French immigrants. After several years the family had returned, leaving
the girl, who about three or four months before had come to Chicago
from a New York resort.
"But the slavery feature was bulwarked by every fact that we could
elicit from these drilled women. Not one of them knew by what steamer
she had come to the country; she could not even name the line by which
she sailed. She didn't know what the steamer fares were. She could not
name a single street in New York, which would have been a certainty had
she even stopped there for a week at liberty.
"We seized trunks in their possession on which were the stamps of the
customs officials, showing that most of the women had come in the
second cabin. In some of these trunks we found sealed letters, written
by girls to parents in France, begging them to write, and as completing
the slavery chain, we found other letters in possession of the keepers,
written long before by these girls to parents, which the keepers had
received for mailing but which they had refused to post for the
helpless prisoners.
"The girls were 18 to 22 years old and had come through Ellis Island
under assumed names. The letters in the trunks revealed the true names
of the writers. None of them could tell a date of sailing or date of
landing. One of these girls had $1,500 charged against her for clothing
furnished by the house. Another girl said the house owed her $890,
which she had been unable to collect. Once a month they were sent to
the 'summer cottage' of this resort, at Blue Island, where under guard
of their slavers, they had the freedom of an elaborate house and the
privileges of a launch and boats on the river.
"Slavery is the only logical deduction accounting for these women's
presence in these houses. None of them could tell anything about the
appearance of a steamer ticket. Everything points to their having been
imported to this country by slave traffickers and of their having been
forwarded to Chicago directly from the port of entry under charge of
some one who assumed all charge of them to every smallest detail of
transportation. In the Chicago houses raided we found that some man
was held responsible for one or more of these women. He lived off them
and was looked to to enforce discipline among them in return for the
privilege."
Only the French and the Hungarian resorts so far have been raided by
the United States district attorney. It is former Assistant State's
Attorney Roe's discovery that on the west side where ten years ago
scarcely a single Jewess was to be found in a resort, today 80 per
cent of the inmates are Russian and Polish Jews. The field here is
promising to the United States authorities, who can work only from the
statute which allows of deporting these women under certain residence
restrictions.
One fact accounting for this increase in Jewish habitues of west side
resorts is explained by a Russian exile in Chicago.
In St. Petersburg, Moscow and other capitals of Russia only the Jewess
in slavery may enter. It is the only condition under which the Jewish
girl may enter these cities.
At the first necessity for importation, how easy is the traffic?
CHAPTER V.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE STAGE.
One thousand innocent girls, the majority of them still in their teens,
are lured to a life of shame each year in the city of Chicago alone
through the stage.
This is the statement of the police. It is the statement of the keepers
of the dives themselves.
A visit to almost any of the dives of the Twenty-second street district
will convince even the most skeptical reader of the truth of this
statement.
Enter and inquire for a show girl.
True, she will not be the sprightly, supple and pretty creature one
sees nightly on the stages of the better theaters of the city. Yet she
is a show girl--or, rather, I might say, has been one.
She is a show girl who has fallen. The sparkle of wine, the glare of
lights and the happy-go-lucky company of the after-theater parties
have proven her downfall. Under their baneful influences she has been
led on, until now you see her dull-eyed, disheveled haired, with all
ambition gone, her natural appetites ruined--a Magdelen.
When a girl becomes a member of a chorus or ballet of a comic opera
company--that is to say, when she enters the profession--she is
usually a good girl, of fair education, with supple figure, and usually
beautiful in features. As a rule she has never kept company with men,
moneyed men, blase men of the world.
In every chorus one will find a number of "old stagers," or girls who
have been in the profession for several years. They have been through
"the mill." The gay life has attracted them. They know lots of "dandy
good fellows" who are more than willing to "show them a good time."
The family names of the young men are almost copyrighted by the
newspapers. Every one has heard of them.
It is easy for the "old stager" to win the young and inexperienced girl
unless the younger show girl has a great amount of will power. Once won
over, the work is easy.
It starts with a dash through the city in a ten thousand dollar
automobile. Drinks are taken en route. Of course, the young girl can't
refuse. She is with such nice fellows: The "old stager" urges her on.
The "stager" may have lost her attractions, but the old gay life must
be kept up. To keep her place in the whirl she must turn procuress for
the rich men who must be amused. If she did not bring the young girl
her company would not be asked.
The first trip usually proves the first step into the dark pit. Even
though the young show girl may not have fallen the gay company has had
its effect. The next time a party is suggested there is no refusal.
There is no refusal of the drinks brought to the girl. The suggestive
remarks and show of animal passion of the male companion are received
with less resentment.
Then the final step towards the brothel is taken. It may be in the
richly furnished apartments of the young man after a night's carousal.
It may be in some of the loop hotels that live off of fallen women. It
may be in the brothel itself.
The senses may have been dulled by some sleeping potion. It is not an
unusual occurrence for a girl to be drugged while sipping some innocent
looking drink or partaking of the luxurious viands set forth at these
seemingly gay parties. The "wealthy young man"--the companion of the
young girl--may be a white slaver in disguise, merely spending the
money of his employers, the keepers of the brothels, that he may be
able to supply them with new human flesh.
The records of the police courts of the city tell of scores of such
cases. They do not tell the story, however, of the thousands who have
been lured in a like manner and who kept silence because of their shame.
They do not tell of the young girls to whom the promise of marriage
was made and who, under this persuasion, fell. In some instances the
promise is even fulfilled, but the girl wife awakes to find herself
even farther advanced toward the ultimate goal--the brothel.
Once on the downward path, there is but little chance of reformation.
The thought of her shame drives her from her purer companions. She
seeks company that is on a lower moral plane. The dull, innocent
existence and the purer pleasures no longer attract her. Home and
parents are forgotten in the mad whirl. Religion and home teachings are
a thing of the past. The whole nature has changed.
She gradually assumes the habits and customs of her immoral companions.
She drops into the slangy language of the underworld. The oaths and
drunkenness that once were repellant to her are heard with an unmoved
conscience. Her physical charms are attacked by this fly-by-night
existence. All of the innocent attributes that once were applauded and
extolled are dead.
The managers no longer want her. She is not sprightly enough. Her voice
has lost its charm and her face is dull. They must have girls who
excite interest and enliven their audiences. It is only a short time
until she is unable to find a place to work.
It is a mad, wild dash while it lasts--good cheer and Bohemian
fellowship, but it always has the ultimate end--the furnished flat or
the recognized den of vice.
It may last a year, it may last several, but the goal is the same. The
girl who "saw the good time and met such nice fellows" is eventually a
victim to the caprice of flesh buyers. In the end she doles out her own
body for a price. This is the price she pays for her "good time."
But few of the girls who start on this downward path ever reform. Many
have tried, but the way is too hard. They meet persons who have known
them when they were leading this evil existence. They are slighted and
scoffed at. Their ambition to again become pure and good is thwarted.
As a rule they sink back into the whirl. This time they give up in
utter abandon. Nothing is then too bad or repulsive. The end is not far
off.
The girl in the road company is subjected to the greater temptations.
She must travel at all hours of the night and day. The road shows
usually play but one night in a town.
The hotel accommodations are usually poor. In some places she must
"double up" with somebody. Sometimes it is a male companion.
In the burlesque shows this is not regarded as out of the way. The
chorus girls of these vulgar attractions are usually "castoffs" or "has
beens" from the comic operas or more wholesome attractions. Their
charms have diminished, therefore they must accept these more lowly
positions.
The dressing rooms of men in many of the smaller theaters are in close
connection of those of the women. Recently in the city of Chicago a
crusade was started against these places. Some alterations were made,
but the condition in many instances is unimproved.
The young girls are taught and drilled that sex is to be forgotten on
the stage.
Here feminine traits are to be left at home. If a girl is asked to kiss
or throw her arms about a man, no matter what character he may be, it
is her duty to do so. If she is asked to bare her body to the public
gaze, with nothing but skin tights to cover her nudity, it is her duty
to do so. That is what she is being paid for.
The animal nature of the audience must be satisfied.
Every year the vulgarity becomes more and more apparent. New and more
suggestive novelties must be introduced to satisfy this "taste." The
songs must have a "meaning"--the dances, some of which bring the blush
of shame to the brow of even the most hardened theater-goers--must also
arouse the passion.
The good girl first rebels at such. Day in and day out, as she
rehearses, she sees other girls doing the thing that is required
without kick or objection. She gradually falls into it herself. It
does not look so bad after she has bowed to the manager's wishes
several times.
It isn't long before the things that once caused her to blush and
falter seem to be a natural consequence. The things against which she
once fought are repulsive no longer.
She gradually falls into line with the others. Her innocence is a thing
of the past.
She is no longer a girl--she is a woman "who knows."
It was about a year ago that I saw a young girl, a beautiful little
creature scarcely nineteen years old, at a Chicago theater. She was a
beauty, even in comparison with the other comely girls in the squad of
beginners.
While they were resting after an act I talked with her. She frankly
told me she was stage struck, but that her desire to become a great
actress was inborn and not gained by association. Before she came to
the city from her home in a little town out in Iowa she had seen but
one show. Her ideas of the stage had been gained from books and from
day dreams.
Her conversation was the essence of innocence. Her family had been
particular about her rearing. They had been in moderate circumstances
and had given her everything in their power. She had come to Chicago
to attain her ideal--to become a great actress.
She was of the frank and innocent type. Everybody she regarded as her
friend. She was enthusiastic about her art. That her ambition would be
realized she did not doubt for an instant.
It was ten months later when I met her again.
Her face wore a tell-tale look. The daintiness of bearing and innocent
features were missing. Her shyness was gone. She was bold, and
immeasureably aged.
A heavy coat of powder and rouge besmeared her face, but only served
to make the dark circles beneath her eyes stand forth with more
prominence. The simple, childish gown I had admired was replaced by a
showy, flashy creation.
In one glance I read the answer, the secret of her changed existence.
When her eyes met mine, for a second in their dull depths I could see
an expression of the old innocence. Probably it was the thought she
entertained for that short space in the connecting of me with her old
and pure existence.
When she spoke I could not be mistaken. Try as she did to appear the
girl of old, it was useless. The pace had told and left its trace only
too strongly written on every line of her face.
After the usual greeting I asked her to take dinner with me. She
assented.
In the cafe I asked her what had happened. How she had fallen.
For a minute she sat gazing at me and her eyes filled with tears.
"Do I look that way? Can every one I meet read what I am?" she asked
tearfully.
I tried to evade her questioning, but she pressed for an answer. Then I
told her that I was afraid her secret was only too plainly written.
"Why don't you give it up and go home?" I asked her.
She thought a minute and then answered that she couldn't.
"I'm not as bad as lots of the others," she said desperately. "I don't
hope and long any more to become a great actress.
"I found there were so many more girls who were more accomplished than
me. I couldn't get anything but a chorus part. I became discouraged and
went out for good times. I had them, I guess."
When I asked her to go home and try to begin over again her anger was
aroused. The company she had kept had left its mark on her.
"Say, now, don't hand me any of that religious talk," was her angry
answer. "It's nothing to you why I don't go home. I've had good times
and I am going to have more of them."
I talked to her for a few minutes, but soon found argument to be
useless. We ate our dinner quietly and without further words. When I
parted with her it seemed as though it were for the last time. I knew
the end that was near at hand--the specter that was waiting for her.
It was three weeks later when I saw her again. There was a different
setting for the scene than at our two other meetings.
The scene was laid in a cell room at the Harrison street police
station. On an iron cot lay a young girl. She was in a maudlin
condition from drugs. Her clothes were dirty and torn. Her face was
discolored and bloated.
It was the same girl--the little innocent show girl of a year before.
She had been arrested in a raid by the police on the notorious Clark
street opium dive of On Ling Lung. Lying in a dirty cot in the rear
of the basement den, she had been found by the raiders. She was
unconscious. On a little stand by her side had been a little alcohol
lamp. On the bunk beside her lay an opium pipe.
I asked the sergeant the details of her arrest.
"The station stool pigeons who had been watching the place saw her
go down into it about a week ago," said the sergeant. "A well dressed
Chinaman was with her. She looked as though she was drunk.
"We wanted to get all of those opium smokers down there all at once,
so we waited a week. I don't think she has eaten much since she went
there. Just laid there and smoked.
"After they get a taste of the dreamy stuff they can't leave it alone.
It's poison and it just goes all through them.
"You don't want to monkey with her," the sergeant admonished when I
suggested that I would see that care would be given her. "She's gone
now. She got the taste, and there's no use trying to break it. You
couldn't. She'll get a couple of months down in the Bridewell and it'll
straighten her up for a while, but she'll be back in a little while.
"No, sir, there's no use talking, when they once get a whiff of that
dope they might as well jump in the lake. They're no good."
She was still lying in a stupor on the iron cot when I left the dingy
cell room. In a couple of hours she would awaken, but only to go into a
delirium.
As I left I could see a vision of the innocent girl of the year before,
standing among the sceneries of the down-town theater, telling of her
ambitions.
How far had her whole being retrograded from that day!
But she was only one of many--a victim of the stage.
Probably the greatest agency through which girls are lured is the fake
"theatrical agency."
In Chicago there exists many of these clearing houses for the vice
trust. Sumptuous offices are maintained in great office buildings
down town. Large office forces are necessary to carry on the enormous
business they conduct.
These concerns operate usually under a name similar to those of the
legitimate and responsible theatrical agencies. Their advertisements
usually appear in papers in small towns and cities. The police keep a
close watch on them, but without result.
Few of the girls obtained by the slavers through these agencies are
ruined in the city.
The "theatrical agency" slaver works in this manner:
He advertises in papers all over the country for girls "who wish to
take up theatrical work." Even in the city papers he inserts ads
disguised, but with the same meaning.
Large salaries are offered to beginners. Chances of advancement within
a few months to parts in plays are held out. Offers are made to sign
contracts for several years' duration.
Every girl must answer the advertisement in person. This is imperative.
Scores of girls do answer the ads. They usually range from 16 to 21
years in age. The majority of them come from families in only moderate
circumstances.
They are received with every courtesy. If the girl is good looking, of
good figure and a fair entertainer she is "accepted" by the fashionably
dressed manager. If she is not up to these requirements she is told to
come back.
When the girl signs the "contract" her fate is sealed. Great
inducements are offered her.
She is told that she must join a road company traveling in the west,
and which will perform in a city probably 100 or 150 miles away on a
near date.
The girl, happy at her good fortune, is enthusiastic. She bids her
family a fond good-bye, the last, probably.
The kiss she places fondly on her mother's brow is that of a person
going to her grave. The laughing farewells she has with her young
friends are the last. The homecoming within a few months' time is never
to be realized.
The signing of her name to the contract is the signing of her death
warrant--yes, even worse than that.
In that stroke of the pen she signs away her body to the slavers.
Happily, probably accompanied by a relative, she goes to the
"theatrical agency" office to obtain her railroad ticket. There she
is introduced to a stylishly dressed man. He is to accompany her and
several other girls down to the city where they are to join the troupe,
she is told.
The stylishly dressed man is, in reality, her guard. It is his duty to
see that none of the girls escape their fate. He is to hand them over
to the divekeepers for a sum ranging from $50 to $1,000 each, at the
end of their journey.
Until the girls are handed over to the denkeepers they are treated with
the utmost respect.
They go to their fate like innocent sheep to the slaughter pen.
Probably they are taken to the city where they were told they were
going. Probably there is a "sudden change of plans" after the girls are
at the depot. They are then taken to another city from the destination
told their relatives and friends.
On the arrival at the end of their journey they are met by a woman. She
is stylishly dressed and wears many beautiful diamonds. She is probably
introduced as the "leading lady." She has taken a special interest in
the new girls. She offers to show them about the city.
It is probably at dinner or while they sleep innocently that night,
dreaming of their good fortune, that they are robbed of their senses.
A handkerchief, wet with chloroform or ether, spread over their faces
does the work. Or it may be a small powder dropped in their coffee.
Then comes the awful awakening.
The scene changes to a den of vice. The young girls awake in a darkened
room. Each one is alone. All of her clothes have been taken from her.
She is nude. Her head seems to be bursting. It is the after-effect of
the drug.
As she begins to regain her faculties more fully she makes out the
figure of a man in her room. As he sees her beginning to revive
he comes towards her. She attempts to cover up her nude body. She
struggles to free herself as he grabs hold of her. He laughs at her
pitiable efforts to repulse him.
What matter it if she does resist him! She has been ruined while she
lay unconscious under the influence of the drug!
The young girl, terrified and ill, is easily made a friend of by the
woman who comes to her and offers her sympathy. She drinks of the
"medicine" that is offered her. In a few minutes she is in a maudlin
condition.
It is more "dope."
Under the influence of this drug she is a mark at the hands of the
denkeepers. She is given whisky and liquor. As the effects of the drug
die out she craves for more. Liquor is given in its stead.
For several weeks she may be kept in this state. She is maudlin and
resents no liberties taken with her.
Then comes the awakening. When the divekeeper thinks she is
sufficiently "broke in" she is refused liquor. She gradually becomes
sober.
It is an awful awakening. The darkness of it all--the thought of her
ruin drives her mad. She is watched carefully for days so that she can
not harm herself. To forget the terrible things she is forced to do,
she goes back to drink. Under its influence she is past knowing of her
forced sins.
Her every hope is ruined. If she attempted to leave the place she would
be beaten and imprisoned. The young girl is ashamed, anyway, to go home
and confess the story of her "theatrical" career.
She stays behind and becomes one of them. In the little home, probably
only a hundred miles away, a father and mother wait expectantly for her
homecoming.
The wait is long, for she never returns. She has been swallowed up by
the giant octopus, white slavery.
An example of this method of white slavery was recently exposed in the
Chicago newspapers.
Two young girls, one 15 years old, the other 16, applied for positions
at one of these "theatrical agencies." They were given positions in a
"show" that was playing at Springfield, Illinois.
A big salary was guaranteed both of them. They were happy at their
good luck. Both ran away from home to accept the positions. A man
accompanied them to Springfield.
In a restaurant in the capital city of Illinois they were drugged.
Poison was placed in their food. When they woke up they were in one of
the lowest dives of the city, the "Big O" saloon and brothel.
In this place are kept fifty girls. The majority of them were obtained
by a similar method. There is only one entrance to the floor on which
the girls were confined. That door was to a stairway that connected the
upper floor with the saloon. A man stood on guard to see that none of
the girls escaped.
Three times the girls attempted to escape. In the last effort one of
them was successful. The other two times the girls were beaten and
starved when caught.
The girl who escaped made her way to a police station. She was garbed
only in a short wrapper that reached barely to her knees. The remainder
of her person was bare. Her clothes had been taken from her when she
was taken to the place.
The police at once raided the place and rescued the other girl. The
Chicago police were notified and returned both of them to their parents.
Both girls had been horribly treated. Every liberty that can be
imagined had been taken with them. They had been forced to do acts
beyond comprehension.
This is but one actual instance of the methods employed to lure girls
to an awful fate, but it tells the story of hundreds.
This is but one method whereby the great slave mart of Chicago is kept
in operation, sacrificing its thousands of girl to the demon lust.
The stage, with all its attractions, can be but the stepping stone to a
life of shame, unless the girl is surrounded with every home protection.
It leads its victims a merry whirl, a gay, giddy time, while it lasts,
but the end is always in sight.
The brothel flirts with the stage. It regards it as a needful source of
supplies.
And the stage, fickle and flighty, lays its innocents on the altar.
Its sacrifice yearly in the great metropolis of the west is 1,000
victims a year.
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE FIVE THOUSAND.
It was the cold gray dawn of a late November morning. The scene is laid
in the marshy slough far to the north of the buildings of the Dunning
poor farm at the north edge of the city of Chicago.
In the chill and drizzling rain an aged, bent-shouldered man was
digging. The soft, wet mud he tossed in a pile alongside of the hole in
which he stood. Finally he slowly clambered out of the pit and surveyed
his work.
The hole was nearly six feet long and three feet wide. It was about the
latter in depth.
Suddenly the old man looked up. To the south of him he heard the rumble
of a wagon. A few minutes later the rusty gate at the end of the meadow
swung creakingly on its hinges. With a rattle and bounce the wagon
again started towards him.
The wagon was a high boarded affair. On its side could be read the
inscription, "City of Chicago," and then the number "321."
The vehicle drew up close to the hole. The driver reined in his
galloping horses with a jerk at its side.
"Hello, Bill. Been waiting long?" yelled the driver to the old man as
he jumped from his seat.
"Just finished," answered the digger.
The driver by this time was busy with the end-gate of his wagon.
Letting it down, he pulled at a long box in the vehicle.
The box was a hastily constructed affair. It was of plain, unfinished
boards. Sticking to the boards were pieces of colored lithographs,
as though they had once been part of a dismantled billboard. The top
consisted of two heavy planks roughly nailed on.
The driver struggled with the box a moment. Then he came around to
where the aged man stood.
"You've got to help me, Bill. She's a darn heavy one," exclaimed the
driver.
The two men clambered up on the wagon and grabbed hold of one end
of the box. Together they lifted it in the air. The box slid to the
ground, on end, with a thud.
The men took hold of the box and skidded it along the muddy ground to
the pit. It was slid off to the top of the hole. There it stuck.
"Gee, Bill, you didn't get that hole long enough," exclaimed the driver.
"You guys up at the dead house didn't tell me she was a six footer,"
muttered the old man. "How'd you expect me to guess on these stiffs?"
"Never mind, Bill, I'll fix it," said the driver.
Then, suiting his words, he leaped high into the air and came down with
a bound on one end of the box. The soft ground gave away after a few
attempts and the big box sank with a sucking sound in the bottom of the
hole.
"Take care of her good, Bill," yelled back the driver, as he clambered
back on the seat of his wagon. "She's a swell one. She came from the
E---- club. She certainly was a peach.
"Doc told me, when I was loading her on a while ago, that it was a
dirty shame to waste such a good stiff. He said that if she hadn't been
so far gone they'd have handed her over to the medical schools."
Then, with a rumble, the wagon started off on its return journey.
The old man gazed down for a moment on the box. On its top, inscribed
with black paint, was the number "24331."
At the side of the pile of dirt lay a little six inch board, which the
driver had thrown from the wagon. It, too, bore the number "24331."
The old man dug his spade into the wet dirt. Then he pitched a huge
clod into the pit. It struck with a resounding bang on the lid of
the box. In a few minutes the hole was filled. The old man stuck the
numbered stick into the ground at the head of the mound.
Stretching away in long rows on either side, hundreds of other similar
numbered sticks jutted from unkempt mounds.
The old digger shouldered his spade and started slowly to leave the
scene. Then he stopped and slowly surveyed his work.
"A swell one, huh," he half muttered to himself. "Well, so was lots of
the rest of them that's out here now--once."
Then, with a sigh, he started on his long trudge across the muddy
meadow towards the buildings of the poorhouse.
* * * * *
It was the night of the same day.
The myriad of incandescents in the "red light" district lighted
that section of the city as though it were day. Drunken crowds of
fashionably dressed men caroused about the streets, hurling vile names
at persons they met. Down at the edge of the district a fight was
waging. A large crowd had collected. A blue-coated policeman dashed
towards the combatants, club in hand. There was a wild scramble in all
directions.
In the shadows of a big building a man was crouching. His cap was
pulled low about his eyes to shield him from recognition.
He was a "roller," or holdup man. He was watching a particularly
drunken man who staggered along the street. If the man went into the
darkness his fate would be sealed. The "roller" would be upon him like
a panther. A crunching blow on the head with the short lead bar that
the robber gripped in his hand. Then a hurried searching of the man's
pockets. The extracting of his money and watch. Then back into the
darkness again to wait for a new victim.
Suddenly the man drew back further into his hiding place. An automobile
had stopped directly opposite him, in front of the E---- club. A well
dressed man leaped from the machine and gave orders to his chauffeur to
wait until he returned.
The man hurried up the steps to the massive door. The bell pealed back
in an inner parlor. A liveried servant opened the door. As the man
entered a negress, an assistant keeper, came towards him.
"Hello, Mr. W----, where have you been for the last couple of weeks?"
inquired the woman.
"Been out of town," answered the man. Then he glanced around the place.
"Where's Mabel?" he asked, with a laugh.
"She's not here any more," muttered the negress.
"What's the matter--sick, is she?" asked the visitor.
"Nope; worse. She croaked a couple of days ago," answered the woman.
"Too bad," answered the man. "She was a pretty girl. Well, that's the
end of her, I guess. Got any new ones?"
"Yes, we got one in today to take her place," answered the woman. And
then she added, with a laugh: "She thinks she's in a swell place and is
going to have a big time. She's a beauty, though; eighteen years old
and raised in a little town down state."
"All right, run her out and let me see her," broke in the man.
In the big den of vice there was no mourning. The mentioning of the
dead girl's name was forbidden. The thought of death might act as
a damper on the night's orgy. A day later she would not be missed.
Another girl would take her place. Perchance some one might drop in
some day and ask for her, but only in a matter-of-course way.
Only one girl in 80,000 dead. What did she count in that vast host?
One day, but a few weeks ago, I entered one of these dens on Armour
avenue, in Chicago. I wandered up on to the second floor without the
knowledge of the keepers. An open door attracted my attention. Peering
in I saw a young girl lying on a bed.
Her head and face were swathed in bandages.
She seemed to be in great pain. On a table near at hand were several
bottles of medicine. She was without a nurse and alone in the room.
I asked her what was the matter, but she only shook her head and
refused to answer. I persisted. After much persuasion she lifted an
edge of the bandage and exposed her face.
It was a mass of burns.
Before I could inquire further a negress keeper entered the room.
"You can't stay in here," she said angrily.
"What's the matter with the girl?" I asked.
"Oh, she got foolish the other day and took a dose of carbolic acid,"
was the answer. "She ain't burned bad--at least not as bad as I've seen
lots of them. Don't give her any of that soft home talk and she'll get
over it all right in a couple of days."
With this the woman held the door open and motioned for me to leave.
In the early morning, three days later, I happened to pass the same
place. A wagon, painted black and without a name to designate its
owner, was standing in the road at a side entrance.
I stood watching for a few minutes. Presently the door opened. Four men
came out carrying between them an undertaker's stretcher. On it lay a
body covered with a white sheet.
I approached and asked one who was dead.
"Just one of the girls here," was the answer. Then he added: "Say, but
she's an awful sight; she took carbolic."
He pulled back the sheet. It was the girl whom the negress had said
"got foolish."
"Where are you taking her?" I asked.
"Oh, she goes over to the county morgue. She ain't got any money and
the house didn't want to pay for her burial. No one knows where her
folks live and I don't expect they'd want her anyhow if they found out
what she was doing up here. The students will get her, I suppose."
"Hurry her up, Joe," broke in another one of the men at this juncture;
"let us get away from here. The boss inside'll be sore if we stick
around. He ain't anxious to advertise the fact that he'd had a dead one
in his house."
The men jumped on the wagon. The horses started on a trot with their
burden towards the county morgue.
* * * * *
In one den is a girl who has saved $5,000 from the money she derived
from the sale of her body. She is in a class by herself in this
respect, for but a few of them save a cent.
This girl was, a few years ago, a stenographer. She was ruined by
her employer and finally, when he had tired of her, discharged from
her position. She had saved nothing. Penniless and without friends,
she heeded the advice of an evil companion and entered a house of
prostitution.
Every cent she could eke and scrape she has saved since she entered
this den. Her hope was that she might be able to save enough so that
she could go to the far west and live down her past life. But the grasp
of the devil held her to her bargain. When the time came she found that
she could not break off her unnatural habits. She could not be innocent
and good again. So she stayed behind.
"How long do you think you will be able to keep up this life?" I asked
her.
"Oh, four or five years, I guess," she answered between puffs of a
cigarette she was smoking.
"What are you going to do then?"
"I'm not thinking about that time," she said.
"When I get worn out and they tell me they don't want me here any more,
I'll go somewhere--I'm not worrying where.
"I'd quit now, but what's the use? If I left here every one would be
kicking me down in the gutter. Now suppose I wanted to be good, would
mothers you know want their nice, innocent daughters associating with
me? No, you know they wouldn't. It would be only a couple of weeks and
then I'd be back again."
"Have any of the girls in this place saved money except you?" was asked.
"There isn't a girl in the place who has ten dollars to her name except
me," was the answer.
"How long have the majority of them been leading this life?"
"Most of them about two or three years. You see, this is a 'dollar
house.' We don't get many of the young ones in here," was the reply.
"How are you paid in this place?" was asked.
"The girls get half of what they get from men. Then they get a tin
check for two and a half cents for every bottle of beer they drink with
the fellows that come in. They have to accept every drink offered them.
"They are charged five dollars a week for their board here by the
keeper of the place. They have to buy all their clothes through him,
too. They are charged big prices, so they don't have a chance to save."
"What does the average girl make in this place?" was asked.
"Oh, $12 to $18 a week, I guess. They have to pay their board and for
their clothes out of that," replied the girl.
In the "red light" district of Chicago is an organized "trust." At its
head are five big politicians. They practically control the district.
The trust owns a dry goods store, a grocery store, a delicatessen, a
drug store, a restaurant and a hotel. It has its own manicure parlors,
its own dentist parlor and its own doctors. Every necessity of the
denizens of the vice ridden district is catered to by this company.
The girls of the district must patronize them. This is an iron-bound
order that cannot be broken.
Suppose that a girl in one of the dens wishes to purchase a dress. She
goes to the dry goods store. There she makes her choice.
Before she leaves the house in which she is an inmate, the person in
charge there gives her a slip of paper. It certifies that she is an
inmate of that house.
She hands this to the shop keeper. After she has made her purchase she
is handed back another slip. On it is marked the price of the dress.
It is always double or triple the amount for which she could have
purchased the same article at any other store.
When she returns to the house she turns this slip in. At the end of
the week, when the house gives her the money she has earned, that
exorbitant charge is deducted from the amount.
This conveys but a small idea of the bondage system that holds the
girls of the district in its grasp. The exorbitant prices charged the
girls for commodities keeps them constantly indebted to the keeper of
the den where they are inmates. They never get ahead.
If a girl attempted to leave the house without satisfying this debt her
clothes would be taken from her. If she ran away she would probably be
arrested, charged with theft or some other crime. Perjured testimony
would be introduced against her. Her word would count for little. In
court she would be regarded as a fallen woman. What she might say would
be scorned. A jail sentence would be the result.
This is one of the many reasons why few girls leave these dens after
they have once become inmates.
The white slaver, who hands young innocent girls over to this ghastly,
reeking life, is not a type. He may be a prize fighter, an army
officer, son of a preacher or a banker.
A year ago Chicago was startled when in a round-up of these local
drivers of white slaves, the young man Leonard, son of a banker,
skilled bank clerk and idol of his mother, was fined $200 and costs for
his crime.
It was a former officer in the Hungarian army who but a short time ago
in Chicago showed this hold that white slavery has upon the slaver.
In this case the man Sterk received a sentence of one year in prison.
Sterk was a man of family. He placed Tereza Jenney in a resort in
Budapest and was living upon her shame. The girl escaped after a year
and came to Chicago. Sterk, deserting his family, followed by the next
boat. His income was gone. To get the woman back was his necessity.
But Sterk made a faux pas. He appealed to the government to deport his
victim and made arrangements to return with her on the same boat. When
under faulty indictment Sterk escaped the United States court, he was
caught on a state charge and convicted.
In many cases, however, the court has had no chance to intervene. The
girls go on and on in their lives of shame. Disease overtakes them in
the end. Weakened physically by their excesses, they are unable to cope
with it. Liquor and cigarettes leave tell-tale ravages.
Hopelessly battling against grim disease, the victim goes deeper
and deeper into the last depths of repulsiveness. Her only hope of
forgetting her affliction is in drunkenness. She loses all her womanly
instincts and is a fiend. Finally liquor fails to keep her in that
state of stupor in which she must remain. Cocaine and morphine are
resorted to.
One day she regains consciousness. The darkness of her horrible
existence enshrouds her. Remorse and recollections of her past engulf
her. She realizes the futileness of her life.
Then comes the end.
Maybe it is by the aid of a bottle of chloroform; maybe a gas jet is
turned on; maybe there is the lifeless body of an "unknown" woman taken
from the waters of Lake Michigan the next morning.
There are no tears wasted. A shrug of the shoulders on the part of
the owner of the resort--probably he swears a bit when her name is
mentioned. He hates to have such things happen to girls in his place,
because "people might think that he is hard with people."
The murderer goes to the gallows with the priest and minister at his
side. He is given his chance of repentance. He is given religious
consolation.
To the fallen woman--once pure and innocent--dragged to her shame
through her innocence--is held out no comfort. She is not given the
opportunity to repent. She is a thing, repellant and abhorred. The very
mention of her name brings a derisive laugh. No masses are said for the
repose of her soul. Religious consolation is not to be thought of.
Her obituary is the notice, hidden among the advertisements of the
local newspapers.
Notice: The body of Mabel Gormly, who died on November 15, 1909,
is being held at the county morgue. If the same is not claimed by
relatives within five days it will be disposed of according to law.
Disposed of according to law means that it will be turned over to the
medical schools for dissection, or if the body is not fit for such,
will be carted to the pauper's graveyard at the poor farm.
With a few changes in minor detail this tells the story of the five
thousand.
It tells of the end of the 5,000 innocents who yearly are lured to a
life of shame in the city of Chicago alone.
It tells the story of the vacant chair at the hearthside of many a home
throughout the country.
It is the annual tragedy, repeated not once, but 5,000 times yearly, in
Chicago.
The end is the dissecting table--the potter's field--the lake.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TRAGEDY OF THE LITTLE LACE MAKER.
(ELLA GINGLES' OWN STORY.)
As a prelude to the story which Ella Gingles tells for herself from
the beginning of her trip from Ireland to America and her horrible
experiences, the following letter which was received by Attorney
Patrick H. O'Donnell from her pastor, is printed.
Larne Manse, Larne, Co. Antrim, Ireland.
29th June, 1909.
Dear Sir:--
Last evening two American ladies, Miss Hopkins, of Chicago, and Mrs.
Murphy, of Minneapolis, called upon me with reference to the poor young
girl, Ella Gingles, whom, like a chivalrous-hearted Irishman, you have
done and are doing so much to protect and defend. I know her well,
her father is a member of the Congregation of which I am minister,
as were his ancestors before him. He is a large farmer, well off, as
Irish farmers go here in the North of Ireland, and his wife, Ella's
mother, is an exceedingly nice, gentle-hearted woman. They have had a
large family--thirteen, if my memory serves me--and as their minister
I christened them all and have seen them grow up from infancy. Ella
was frequently under my roof, as she was on friendly terms with two
young ladies--my adopted daughters--who reside with me. I always found
her a bright, cheerful, well-principled girl, clever in many ways
with her needle, etc., and especially in the art of crocheting and
manufacturing lace. In the latter branches I know that she won prizes
at our local annual industrial exhibitions in the town of Larne. But
the family being large and their not being particularly prosperous here
in Ireland, she and other young members of the family, like many other
young people of energy and enterprise, have sought a land of better
promise across the Atlantic with sad results to her unfortunately. As
I have said, she is the child of respectable and well-off parents.
She, herself so far as I know, has always been respectable and well
conducted in every way, with a large infusion of enterprise and
determination in her character; so that you may proceed in your
generous and energetic endeavors in her behalf with the most entire
confidence in her integrity in every respect. Accept for yourself and
convey to those truly Christian people who are associated with you in
the defense of an innocent, but much-injured young girl, the assurance
of the most sincere gratitude and admiration, not only of the writer,
but of the sorely-stricken parents and friends of poor Ella, and
believe me,
Sincerely yours,
J. Kennedy,
Minister of the Old Presbyterian Congregation
of Larne & Kilwaughter.
(Postmarked): "Larne, Ireland, June 30, 1909."
BY ELLA GINGLES.
It is a long and hard way when one must set forth to expose one's own
butchery, shame and misfortune, but I feel that in telling this story
the very fact that I have been a victim will carry with it weight.
It is a far cry from the green hills of Larne, from the wet meadows,
glistening with the rains, from the song of the nightingale in the
gathering dusk, the sweetness, the beauty of that green island which I
call my home and which will henceforth be my only home, to the mire and
filth of a criminal court in the city of Chicago, to the unspeakable
horrors through which I have been dragged, and to the desperation to
which I was driven.
Yes, this is a very far cry, from sweetness and light to mire and
filth, but I feel that in justice to myself I must tell this thing
as it is. I do not feel now as if this mire and filth had touched my
person. I feel today that although I have been the victim of human
fiends, although I have been more monstrously abused than any other
girl of my age or character in the world, I myself am as clean and pure
as on the day when I left that little Irish homestead 18 miles from
Belfast and came to America. One who is murdered is not a murderer, nor
is one who is outraged a person of bad character. And a clean mind soon
forgets even the most terrible episodes, the most awful happenings.
Yes, I will forget everything that has happened and become again the
girl who left Ireland such a short time ago to become a victim of
fiends.
There are things that one must try to forget, although I know in my
heart that my sleep till my dying day will be haunted by the pictures
of the demons who have worked their will upon me and who if they had
their just deserts should burn in deepest hades forever. But I will
forget, I must forget. If I do not forget I shall go mad.
They say that I have been cool, calm and collected on the witness stand
during my trial. I have been cool, calm and collected because I was
telling the truth, but the reaction from those awful hours in court
have been so terrible that I shudder even yet to think of them.
It was only the thought of the green hills, of the heather, of the
blossoms in Spring and the yellow corn at harvest time, of the cuddling
mother love, of the kindly faces which will not turn away because I
have been tortured--just the green hills, the green hills, and the
rains and the sunshine and the light and the purity--I can say no more,
but they will help me to forget, they will help me to become again the
girl who won the lace prizes in Larne and the girl who had not been
the victim of fiends. I will forget there. I could never forget here.
America has become to me a nightmare, a horror; the name stands to me
for all that is vile, horrible, unmentionable.
I am telling my story, not because I have any animus against anybody,
not because I wish to get even with anybody, not because I wish to
clear my own name, because I believe that has been cleared before the
world by the solemn edict of a jury--not because I wish to create or to
have brought forth the terrible things which were done to me.
I am telling this story in the hope of saving other girls, who like
myself may be in danger from the beastly "slavers" and a life of shame.
If I can but save a few girls from this horrible fate, if I can only
help, in some modest way, to protect womanhood from the horrors of
white slavery, I shall feel happy for laying bare my soul and giving to
the world the true story of the attempt to make a white slave out of me.
I feel that I must write it, that American girls, and girls of foreign
birth who come to America, will not be misled and trapped as I was into
the veritable jaws of hell. If I can keep a single girl out of this
hell on earth by telling the plain story of what happened to me, I
shall feel that I have done my duty by myself.
I am told by men who know about these awful things that my case is only
one of many. What happened to me may be an isolated instance and I am
told that it is representative of the workings of the panders for the
"upper ring," or the dealing in girls' bodies by rich men, rather than
the selling of girls to cheap resorts through a quicker route.
I feel that there is no pit too deep for people who will send an
innocent girl into a life of shame, who will throw temptation in a
girl's way, and will, when temptation fails, resort to force to drive
her into hades itself.
I was born in Larne, Ireland. My parents are respectable middle class
people and property owners. Our family is a large one, there being
thirteen children. We are protestants, as are most of the people of
that particular district of Ireland, our church being the Presbyterian.
We have always been members of that church, as the letter from our
pastor shows.
Larne, the city where I was reared, is a little town about 18 miles
from Belfast. One of the principal industries of the town is the
making of hand-made Irish laces. I was brought up to the lace-making
trade. I won several prizes against the best lace-makers in the Belfast
region. I have invented one particular lace pattern of my own, an
improved "grape-vine pattern." With this I won the lace-making prize in
Larne on the occasion.
In Ireland there are continual tales of America, how easy it is to
make money over there. I had never been farther away from Larne than
Belfast in all my life. Many Irish girls had come to America, worked
for a time and returned home with money, placing herself in a position
to help out her parents in their old age. These stories attracted me. I
met girls who had been to America. They had made lots of money and had
fine clothes. The name America soon came to mean to me a golden land in
the West, as it has meant to many another simple Irish girl. The spell
came upon me so strongly that I could think of nothing else. I could
see nothing but a golden land, and a fortune that I could make there
with my laces, for I had heard that fabulous prices were paid for Irish
laces in America. I begged my people to let me go to America. After
much pleading they gave their consent.
I was about to purchase my ticket in Belfast when word reached me that
Belle Raymond, a girl I knew in Belfast and who had already purchased
her ticket but had been taken ill, would be unable to make the trip.
I thought I might get this ticket a little cheaper. I did save quite
a little by purchasing her ticket, but I was obliged, on account of
the registration of her name, to come under her name. My enemies have
made much of the fact that I had gone under Belle Raymond's name. I
am sorry now that I did it after all that has come out in connection
with my terrible experiences. But I hope I will not be too severely
blamed for doing what so many other people, even business people of
integrity, have been known to do. To travel on another person's pass is
undoubtedly wrong, but it is not a heinous crime.
Belle Raymond's ticket was for Canada and not for America direct, but
to my mind all the countries over here were just alike, and as long as
one landed on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean, I was satisfied. It
was all a land of gold to me. So I went to Montreal on the ticket of
Belle Raymond.
On ship-board I made several acquaintances among the other Irish girls
on board, and they told me that the best way to get a start on this
side of the water was to get a position as maid to some great lady and
then interest her in lace-making. Then, they said, I could soon build
up a good trade for my laces among the people who had plenty of money
to pay for them. They said that any attempt to sell laces outright
would end in failure, as not one person in 100 knew real Irish lace
when they saw it, and they would think that I was a fraud unless some
great lady vouched for me.
I did not land directly in Montreal. The last stage of the journey I
performed by train from Quebec, where I left the steamer. I spent half
a day in Quebec viewing the sights of the city in company with several
other girls. I then took the train for Montreal where I went directly
to the Young Women's Guild home, where I knew I would be safe. The
Guild secured me a position with the Thornton family in Belleville,
Ontario.
I was overjoyed when I found that I was going into a great rich family,
for they told me that Mrs. Thornton's father was worth many, many
millions of dollars, and that he controlled the roller mill business in
Canada. This meant that if I secured Mrs. Thornton as a patroness for
my laces I could get all the rich ladies to buy.
Disappointment awaited me and my dreams were shattered. I worked nine
months as a housemaid. Mrs. Thornton was not approachable by servants,
although she was uniformly kind and considerate.
At the Thornton home the disillusions as to the golden land began
to disappear rapidly and my life settled down to the humdrum of a
housemaid's life. My dreams were shattered. I was tempted to do wrong
on numerous occasions. Disheartened, I finally left the services of the
family. I was given a letter certifying to my good character when I
quit.
But there was no chance to get started with my lace-making. I thought
perhaps it was because Belleville was too small a place and that
therefore I would do better if I could get a place in a big city where
I might get a position as lace-maker in some of the big stores I had
heard about.
I went to Toronto where I worked for about three weeks. At the end
of this time I had almost given up hope of doing anything with my
lace-making. I was heartsick and almost ready to go home. I had saved
up a little money, however, enough to take me to Chicago or some big
city in the United States, and still have $40 or $50 left with which to
support myself until I could get work of some kind. I was on the point
of going back home to Ireland at first, but the thought that I would
get there just about penniless, and without having done well on this
side, and the thought of what the neighbors would say and how the other
girls would laugh at me, finally decided me to come to Chicago and
make one last trial at what the Americans call "making good" before I
gave up all hope. This fatal decision was my ruin. Had I been able to
see ahead just a little, to have looked into that awful hell-pit of a
Wellington hotel--but there. God ruled otherwise and perhaps chose me
out as an example and warning.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST NIGHT.
I was practically penniless when I arrived in Chicago. I knew no one.
The magnitude of the city was fearful to me. For hours I wandered about
knowing not where to go. Exhausted and frightened, I at last sought
shelter in a railway station. The matron there was kind and talked
encouragingly to me. She soon knew my story.
She took me to the Young Women's Christian Association and obtained a
room for me. In a few days the officers of the association obtained a
position for me as a maid at the Wellington hotel. For five weeks I was
happy.
In the Wellington hotel was the lace store of Agnes Barrett. Fine Irish
laces were on exhibition. The wealthy women of the city patronized the
place and almost fabulous prices were paid for the tiny bits of laces
on exhibition.
Agnes Barrett seemed to take an interest in me. When she learned that I
could make the laces and had won numerous prizes she was delighted. She
asked me to come and work for her.
I was overjoyed at the opportunity. She told me that all I would have
to do would be to sit in the store and make laces. She said that it
would give the establishment an atmosphere in the sight of the grand
dames. That when they came to the store to make purchases and saw me
sitting at work making the laces before their eyes, it would greatly
increase the value of them. I then went to live with Mrs. Linderman, a
kind, motherly woman, who lived at 474 La Salle avenue.
For a long time I was happy. Then Miss Barrett told me that business
was slack and that she could not employ me steadily. After that,
however, I was in the store quite often. Miss Barrett seemed to take
a great liking for me. She was so kind and considerate. She petted
and fondled me. Mrs. Cecilia Kenyon and Miss Donohue were also in the
store. All of the women lived in the Wellington hotel. Miss Donohue was
secretary of the hotel company. They all seemed to be very prominent.
At least fine dressed men often came into the store to visit them. They
went out to dinners with them and to the theatres.
To me Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon, who was her intimate friend, were
angels.
Often Miss Barrett took trips away from the city. She said at those
times that she was going to French Lick Springs, Ind., where she had
another lace store. When she returned she would show me rolls of bills
which she said were the profits from the store.
She told me that if I were only "wise" like she, I could have fine
clothes and not have to work much. She said that lots of nice men with
plenty of money were looking for nice girls like me, to make wives of
them.
Her feeling towards me seemed to change almost in a day.
I became afraid of her. After these outbreaks I only went to the store
when I was compelled to do so. When I did go she would be extravagant
in her praises of me.
But all this only leads up to the first night.
That awful night, January 4, 1909, will haunt me to my grave. It was
as if the deepest pit of the very deepest hell had suddenly been
transferred to earth and found lodgment in Chicago.
This night is hard for me to describe. That I must bare the awful
sights to which I was witness would be inexcusable if I were not trying
to save other girls from the awful fate which awaits them if they come
to the big cities of America trustful and innocent.
It is left for you who read this whether my attempt to save others from
my dreadful fate is justifiable.
After the orgies which had taken place while I was lying helpless and
frightened so that I could scarcely move, I was told that I must be
Miss Barrett's slave for six months. The price for my slavery was to be
$25 cash down, and $5.00 a day for the term of slavery. I fought and
screamed again at this and said if they did not let me have my clothes
and get out of there I would get a detective and see what could be
done. They both then told me that I could not get a detective at that
hour of the night.
I was turned out of that hotel near midnight in the rain without a cent
of money in my pockets, bleeding from the outrages from which I had
suffered and forced to run all the way to my home in the rain.
I cannot describe the horrible scenes which took place. I cannot even
bear to think of them. I only know that I fought and screamed and
screamed until they took me to a bath room and threatened to cut me to
pieces. They did cut me. I kicked and fought and fought and kicked and
screamed until they administered what they called "knock-out" drops
to me and until they cut me on the arms, face and limbs. It was only
when I became unconscious from the drug that I ceased fighting them. I
fought them even when they had me tied to the bath tub.
The man torturer I did not recognize. He was not the man in the
velvet mask who tortured me on the first night. He was smaller. Mr.
O'Shaughnessey, my lawyer at my trial, demanded that the state in
prosecuting me produce a man named Rohr and asked one of the witnesses
if they knew a man named Anhaltz or Anhalt. I do not know if either of
these was the man who held me on either occasion.
I do know, however, that the cutting was done by Miss Barrett herself,
and she threatened me savagely several times, declaring that she would
cut my heart out. The records of my sworn testimony, both in affidavits
and at the trial show this.
It was while I was being tortured that the name of a man named Taggart
was first heard by me. Miss Barrett said, "If Tom Taggart could only
see her now." This I swore to on the witness stand in my trial for
stealing lace which I made myself and I am ready to swear to it again.
Then there was something said about the "Springs," and Miss Barrett
said, "You know I promised to get them girls like this one." I was
frightened to death by this time and did not know what to expect.
The story of the horrors of those awful nights of torture I will never
forget. I can not repeat the happenings of those nights.
To tell that part of the story, I present to the reader two affidavits
which I made as I lay, suffering from my awful treatment, on a cot at
the Frances Willard Memorial hospital. They are the substance of my
testimony in court:
STATE OF ILLINOIS, }
County of Cook. } ss.
Ella Gingles, being first duly sworn, deposes and says:
That, about seven o'clock on the evening of January 4th, 1909, she
returned from a trip down-town to her room at 474 La Salle Avenue,
Chicago, and there found Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, and Mrs.
Kenyon waiting.
That they said they had been waiting about four hours for her but that
she found afterwards they had been waiting about an hour; that they
told this affiant they had come out there in a cab, but dismissed the
cab before affiant arrived home, which was near seven o'clock in the
evening; that they came up to affiant's room and that Agnes Barrett,
alias Madame Barette, asked affiant to give her a collar that affiant
had been enlarging for her and affiant told her she had not yet
finished it, to which she replied that the woman to whom it belonged
was about to leave town and could not wait for it.
Affiant then went to the bureau and took out the collar and gave it to
her, when she said that she wanted the rest of the lace, and affiant
told her she had not given affiant any more lace to do; she then said
that if affiant did not give her the lace she would take it and search
the room, whereupon affiant says that they, the two women aforesaid,
did search affiant's room and took all the lace affiant had except what
was in her little work-box, which they did not touch.
That they took a yard of crepe lace that was an original design and
with which affiant won a prize in Belfast, a plate mat that was an
original design, and with which affiant won a prize in Larne, Ireland,
and a necklace with an amethyst drop of a few stones that affiant's
mother bought for her in London and gave her the Christmas before
affiant left home, at which time she bought another with blue stones
and gave it to affiant's other sister; that they also took all the
money that affiant had, consisting of a Canadian dollar, four American
paper dollars and a dollar in change, took affiant's watch, her bank
book showing a deposit of forty dollars in Canada, and a sofa top and
cushion and many other things.
Affiant further says that said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
then asked her to let her look at affiant's trunk, in which affiant
then told her she had nothing of hers, but which she insisted upon
seeing; affiant then went to Mrs. Linderman, the landlady, and got a
candle and took the aforesaid two women down in the basement and opened
the trunk.
Mrs. Kenyon held the candle, and Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
went through affiant's trunk and took a pair of long, white stockings,
a pair of white gloves, some chiffon, and then Mrs. Kenyon dropped
grease from the candle all over anything of any value and the two women
aforesaid then tramped the rest of the clothes into the floor, ruining
them.
Affiant further says that up to that time, Agnes Barrett, alias Madame
Barette, did not claim that any of the stuff was stolen, but that
after she brought what was downstairs upstairs and put all of it into
a pillow-slip, she said to affiant, "Sure this is all mine." Affiant
says that among the things which they took were five medallions, seven
of which affiant still possess, having been made twelve in number for a
Roman Catholic altar cloth.
Affiant further says that after remaining in the room for two hours or
more, joking and laughing and fooling away time, that some time after
nine o'clock this affiant was ordered to take up the bag that they had
filled with affiant's own goods and carry them down to the Wellington
Hotel, and this affiant went, carrying them down on the promise that
when they got to the Wellington Hotel the stuff would be given back or
the ownership settled.
This affiant says she went down that she might settle her dispute with
said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, and bring back her own stuff
to her own home; that the three, Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
Mrs. Kenyon and this affiant, reached the Wellington Hotel and went
into the room of said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, some time in
the neighborhood of half-past nine o'clock, or maybe somewhat later,
having gone down in the street car; and that when they went in Mrs.
Kenyon locked the door to the said Barrett room.
The two women then whispered together in a low tone and Agnes Barrett,
alias Madame Barette, asked this affiant to take off her clothes, and
she refused.
Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, then said to affiant, "You might
have something that belongs to me," to which affiant replied that she
did not, whereupon said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, said, "I
will take them off for you," and she and Mrs. Kenyon then took off
affiant's clothes, stripping her with the exception of her shoes.
Affiant says that in taking off the waist a safety pin in affiant's
back hurt her and she screamed, whereupon said Agnes Barrett, alias
Madame Barette, seized this affiant by the throat and told her she
would choke her to death if affiant made any outcry.
After stripping affiant, Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, said to
Mrs. Kenyon, "If only ----"--and another man whose name affiant does
not remember--"were here now to see this," and Mrs. Kenyon said, "Who
are they," to which she replied, "They are the men that I told you
about."
The affiant says Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, said to her, "I
know a nice gentleman that wants to get you to live with him," to which
affiant replied that she did not want to get married, upon which the
two women laughed and said, "Nobody is asking you to get married; you
would only have to live with someone a little while and you would get
plenty of money for it."
Affiant further says that said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
then told Mrs. Kenyon to hold this affiant, and Mrs. Kenyon grabbed her
from behind, putting her arms through affiant's arms from behind.
The affiant also says that Agnes Barrett then said, "She will do."
Miss Barrett went to the telephone and called up Miss Donohue's room.
Miss Donohue was not in her room.
(The affidavit follows for four pages of revolting details.)
Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon, she says, were unclothed, a short time
later when a man came to the room. When he knocked, affiant says, the
two women put on night gowns and left her entirely uncovered. She says
Miss Barrett asked him what kept him when he was allowed to enter the
room and he replied he could not get there any sooner.
She says his face was covered with a black mask.
Affiant says he attacked her and was assisted in this by Mrs. Kenyon.
The affiant says that after some time the telephone rang and Mrs.
Kenyon answered it and it was for the man and he called up and said,
"Is that you, Charley?"
The affiant says she does not know what was said back but that the man
then said, "Yes, she is here," and he told this man over the phone,
"Yes, it is all right, Charlie, she is here," and added that he would
be back soon.
He then said over the telephone, "Yes, I will just come right away,"
and that after that he put on his clothes and left, but that Agnes
Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon remained in the room.
The affiant further says that before the man went out Agnes Barrett
asked him when he would give her the money and he said, "Well, sure, we
are to come tomorrow night," and added that he would bring the money
then and then left. The affiant says that she then asked Agnes Barrett
for her clothes. These, she says, were given her after a time.
The affiant then says Miss Barrett told her to come down the next night
at five o'clock and offered her a silk dress if she would do as she
bid, and that she then took the silk dress out of the wardrobe and
showed it to her, but affiant refused it.
That she then said that if affiant would come down tomorrow she would
get it fixed for this affiant and that she would have things ready for
this affiant to go down to the Springs. She further told this affiant
that she, this affiant, was to go to French Lick Springs and was to
stay there about a week.
She further stated that while this affiant was at the hotel she was
not to dress in the morning, but put on a kimono and to dress in the
evening, that she was to remain in her room in the afternoon.
This affiant says that Mrs. Kenyon then asked Agnes Barrett, alias
Madame Barette, what about the "last one," to which she replied, "Well,
they have tired of her; they had her long enough." She then told this
affiant that she was to do whatever she would want her to for six
months and that this affiant was to come down there the next day to
sign a paper.
She told this affiant that she was to be down there about three
months, and that she then was going to send this affiant some place
else, but she did not say where, but said that this affiant could sell
lace for her after that.
Affiant further says that she did not take any money that night, but
that the said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, promised to give her
back all the things she took from this affiant if affiant would come
down there the next day at five o'clock.
Affiant says that when said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, gave
affiant her clothes, affiant said that if she did not give her the rest
of her things she would go to a detective.
Mrs. Kenyon said that affiant could not get a detective at that time of
night. She says that night Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, made
her sign two papers; the contents of neither was read to this affiant,
nor was she allowed to see them, and the condition of signing the
papers was to get her clothes.
The affiant says that Agnes Barrett then held up the two papers and
said, "Anybody would believe me with these papers and Mrs. Kenyon."
Affiant says she then asked Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette for a
nickel to ride home, as she had kept all of affiant's money, and she
refused it and said the walk would do affiant good. That when affiant
went out she came with her to the elevator and said, "Be sure and come
tomorrow at five o'clock." Affiant says that she then went out without
any money and ran home most of the way.
Affiant says that on the next day she did not return to the hotel, but
went and told Captain O'Brien; that the enormity of the situation was
such that she could not tell it, and told the first part of it; that
she did not reach Captain O'Brien's office until nearly five o'clock in
the evening because she was ill from the outrages and indignities and
sights of the night before; that she was unable to go out until late in
the day; that the story itself was so horrible that she did not tell it
to any man, but told parts of it to different women who are interested
in her.
I, Ella Gingles, now make this affidavit, not to save myself or to
help myself, knowing well that my ruination is well-nigh complete if
horrible sights and acts and degradations that I cannot describe can
work my disgrace; and I make this affidavit not in revenge, but because
I have been attacked twice in the Wellington Hotel and because I know
that no girl can be safe who like myself has no protectors.
CHAPTER IX.
ARRESTED!
After the horrible outrages of January 4 I did not know what to do.
I was without money, and I would have been without food if Mrs.
Lindermann had not kindly given me something to eat. I could not bear
to think of telling any one, even a police officer or my kind landlady,
of the horrors of that night.
Finally on the afternoon of Thursday, January 8, I did make up my mind
that I would not say anything about the horrors of the case, but would
go to the chief of detectives, Captain P. D. O'Brien, and tell him of
the stealing of my things from my rooms and ask him to get my things
back for me. I went to the captain and told him my story. He seemed
impressed by it, took me to his home that night for supper, lodged me,
and the next day, which was Friday, ordered the women at the Wellington
hotel to bring back the things which they had stolen from me.
On the afternoon of Friday Mrs. Kenyon, who has since died under the
mysterious circumstances, came over alone. Miss Barrett did not come.
The captain ordered her to bring the things over with her and to have
Miss Barrett come over by noon of the next day. The next day I went
back to the captain's office and they both came over. They brought with
them only a part of the things they had taken from my room and they
also put in some things which had never been in my room. I told Captain
O'Brien so when I looked over the lot. We went over everything piece by
piece, and only four small pieces of lace was there any difference of
opinion, Miss Barrett admitting that the rest of the things belonged to
me. I was allowed to take them away.
Captain O'Brien then asked Miss Barrett whether she was going to
prosecute me for theft, and asked her if she was to get the warrant out
before all the offices closed so that I could get bail that night and
would not have to spend the Sunday in jail. Miss Barrett declared that
they had no intention of pushing the prosecution, and we all supposed
the case was then over, except myself. I intended to get my other
things back in time, if I had to sue for them.
We all then left Captain O'Brien's office. I was astounded that night
to be arrested at about eleven o'clock on a warrant sworn out by Miss
Barrett, charging me with having stolen the four pieces of lace valued
at fifty dollars. I was taken to the Harrison street police station.
Here I was compelled to spend the night in a filthy cell.
I understood later that it was the next morning that Captain O'Brien
called up Attorney Patrick H. O'Donnell and asked him to come down to
the station and get out my bond and take up my case. Mr. O'Donnell did
come, and he did get me out on bail furnished by Samuel Feldmann. Mr.
Feldmann came to go on my bail at Mr. O'Donnell's solicitation and that
of Captain O'Brien, as I understand it, although of this particular
point I am not sure. At any rate, I was released on bail pending a
hearing on the charge, which subsequently took place in the municipal
court before Judge Hume.
Mr. O'Donnell kindly took me to his home, and his wife there cried over
and mothered me and was as good to me as my own mother could have been.
Up to this time I had given no hint of the horrors of January 4. I
could not bear to think of them, much less speak of them. Mr. O'Donnell
did not know. No one except those present and myself knew of these
things.
Then the people of Chicago began to come to my aid because I was poor
and friendless. The Irish Fellowship Club employed Attorney John
Patrick O'Shaughnessey to take up my case and investigate it.
I was taken to the office of Mr. O'Shaughnessey and was told that he,
as well as Mr. O'Donnell, would be my friend. Mr. O'Shaughnessey was
rather cross to me at first and seemed to doubt whether or not I could
make any lace. He seemed to fear that I was a common thief, and not a
real lace-maker. He said to me, "Can you make lace?"
I told him, "Yes, I can make lace of any ordinary pattern known as
Irish lace." He said to me, "You sit right down there in that chair and
make some lace, if you can make lace." I replied that I had no thread.
Mr. O'Shaughnessey then sent out and got some thread of the kinds
which I told him to get, and I sat down and worked with the thread for
several hours making lace. At the end of the time I was able to show
Mr. O'Shaughnessey a piece of the grape-vine pattern, which is well
known in Ireland, and which is the pattern which I used when I won my
prizes in my native home of Larne for lace-making. It was the same kind
of lace which I had made on one or two occasions for Miss Barrett at
the Wellington hotel. The pattern agreed with some of the pieces of
lace which I was accused of having stolen from the Wellington hotel.
This exhibition of my powers to make lace convinced Mr. O'Shaughnessey
that I was not a fraud, and that I could do what I had claimed that I
could do. From that time forward he became my active friend and fought
hard for me clear to the end of the terrible trial to which I was
subjected.
Subsequently I was compelled to make lace in the presence of a number
of ladies who were interested in my case, just to show them that I was
not a fraud. Every one seemed to be suspicious of me until I had proved
that I could make lace and that I was not lying. I did not and never
have had a single friend who has not compelled me to give some definite
proof or other either as to lace-making ability or my character since
this whole horrible matter came out.
After my experience in proving to Mr. O'Shaughnessey that I was not a
fraud I was taken to Mr. O'Donnell's home and there cared for by his
wife. Mrs. O'Donnell, who seemed to be about the only person to believe
in me from the first, even when her husband seemed to doubt me, took
good care of me and treated me as if I were her own daughter. After Mr.
O'Donnell had satisfied himself that I was all right, and that there
was no fraud in any of my stories, he, too, was very kind and allowed
me to come down to his office to visit with Miss Mary Joyce, his
stenographer, who used to chat with me while I made lace with which to
pay at least a part of my obligations to the O'Donnells.
It was here, in this office, away up in the air at the Ashland block,
that I made lace day after day. I could only make one or two collars
and a tie or so a week, but that little brought in something, as I had
some exclusive Irish patterns of my own which attracted trade. These
patterns of mine could not be duplicated, at least in America, and the
lace which I made has always attracted attention. One of my customers
for the lace which I made at this time was Miss Sarah M. Hopkins of the
Catholic Women's League of Chicago. She bought several ties from me
and became interested in me at this period of my troubles, before the
brutal second attack at the Wellington hotel.
When Miss Hopkins and other ladies became patrons of mine I thought I
saw a way to make a good living without having to work as a housemaid
any more, and that I could use the trade which I had learned in Ireland
to good advantage. It was the first chance I had really had to show
what I could do since I had left the old country, and I felt very
thankful for it.
The days dragged by very slowly for me, for they kept putting off the
case of trying me for lace-stealing, stealing the lace I had made
myself, from time to time, and some days I cried and cried because the
case was not over and I was not free, because I did not believe that
anybody would convict me of stealing my own property, especially after
the manner in which it was taken.
I remember one day I was crying my eyes out on the couch in Mr.
O'Donnell's law office when Miss Mary Joyce, the best girl friend
I have ever known, came in and tried to quiet me. I cried more and
more until a gentleman came in, I think he was a reporter, and then I
managed to quit crying until he left. Miss Joyce told him to get out
of the place until I was quiet, and he went. After he had gone I began
to cry again, and Miss Joyce said not to cry, that some time soon I
would be back in Ireland again with the home folks. That only made me
cry more, because I did not see how I could face the people at home
after the terrible things that had happened to me and after I had been
arrested.
Long and long those awful days dragged out from January 9 until
February 6. I do not believe that there was a single day that I did not
cry until my eyes were all red, and I know that on many a night during
that time I cried myself to sleep. I could not bear to think of the
shame that had befallen me, although I knew that it was no fault of my
own that it had happened to me.
It was all a nightmare. My nerves were breaking gradually under the
terrible strain.
Then came my hearing before Judge Hume of the municipal court. I was
arraigned on the larceny charge and after Miss Barrett and I had
testified my attorneys demanded that I be held to the grand jury,
and refused to cross-examine the witnesses for the prosecution, so
convinced were they of my innocence.
When this was done Miss Barrett was heard to say, "Oh, my, this is
awful." This remark was overheard by Mr. O'Shaughnessey and convinced
him more than ever that something was being hidden and that I was not
the thief the Wellington hotel people sought to make me out.
During this trial an attempt on the part of Mrs. Kenyon to coach Miss
Barrett while she was on the stand brought forth some strong objections
from Mr. O'Shaughnessey, and Mrs. Kenyon was compelled to stop
attempting to coach Miss Barrett from the floor of the courtroom.
When they tried to make out their case against me at this hearing they
brought a number of pieces of lace which had never been in Captain
O'Brien's office or in my room, and I said so, and Attorney O'Donnell
promptly had them impounded for the purpose of disproving the charge
against me later on. He would not let them have them back, nor would
he let them have back a pair of stockings of Miss Donahue's which they
said I had stolen. This was the first injection of Miss Donahue's name
into the case, but it was brought in later after the second attack on
me in the Wellington hotel.
At this preliminary hearing I was held on the demand of my own people
to the grand jury and was subsequently indicted on their demand that
I might be enabled to effectually clear my name. This was the opening
of the larceny case, where the alleged theft of $25 worth of lace has
caused the expenditure of more than $38,000 all told in prosecution and
defense of me, a little Irish working girl.
CHAPTER X.
THE SECOND ORGY.
The second affidavit of Ella Gingles covering the incidents of the
second night following her arrest is a story of a grewsome tragedy. It
was made as she lay on a cot in the Frances Willard Memorial hospital
in Chicago.
The affidavit, signed by herself and sworn to, is as follows:
STATE OF ILLINOIS, }
County of Cook. } ss.
Ella Gingles, being first duly sworn, deposes and says:
That on the ninth day of February, 1909, she was arrested, charged
with the larceny of jewelry and lace in the city of Chicago, and that
the complaining witness was one Agness Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
and that on the following day she was taken out on bail and became
represented by Patrick H. O'Donnell of Chicago, and a day or two
thereafter also by John P. O'Shaughnessey. The affiant further says
that she had a hearing thereon.
Your affiant says that on Tuesday, February 16, 1909, this affiant came
in the afternoon to the office of Patrick H. O'Donnell, 911 Ashland
block, and there sat in the office making lace for one hour and then
had a talk with Attorney O'Donnell in his private office, and then left
his office a few minutes before five o'clock p. m., but stopped at
the elevator in said building to talk to Mr. O'Donnell and Miss Sarah
Hopkins.
That as she left the said building she had in her pocketbook, among
other small change, a five dollar bill, and that this affiant went from
the office to the store on State street known as Carson, Pirie, Scott
& Co., and went in there and bought a spool of thread for crocheting
purposes, and paid forty cents therefor and gave the five dollar bill
to be changed in making said payment; and this affiant says she is
ready to exhibit her purchase slip showing the purchase and the amount
of money offered in payment therefor; and this affiant says that the
hour of said purchase was almost five o'clock on the evening of the
sixteenth, and that as this affiant approached the door of said store a
cab was standing at the curb and Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
stepped out of said cab and started toward the store and left a man
sitting in the cab waiting, but that this affiant did not see where
Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, went, or did not see her make
subsequent purchases.
This affiant further says that after making said purchase she returned
home to her room at 474 La Salle avenue, Chicago, and there placed the
one key to the door of her room in a secret place where her sister
might find it, and which place was known to herself and her sister, and
the secret place was on the stairs under the stair carpet.
After concealing said key, and before the sister so returned, and after
entering her room and turning out the gas stove, she retraced her steps
and started back to room 545, Wellington hotel, to collect from a Miss
Arnold three dollars that said Miss Arnold owed this affiant; and that
on two separate occasions theretofore this affiant undertook to collect
said money; once while in company with Miss Mary E. Joyce and later
while in company with Mrs. Bagshaw and Miss Sarah Hopkins, but that she
was persuaded not to try to make such collections by both parties.
This affiant says she is familiar with the Wellington hotel and had
worked in said hotel for about a week, and while she worked there said
Miss Arnold did occupy said room, and that Agnes Barrett, alias Madame
Barette, lived on the second floor in said hotel, in room number 228;
and that this affiant, when she went to said hotel, did not know that
Miss Arnold had moved out of room 545, when in fact she had, and, as
your affiant is now informed, had left the hotel on the 12th of the
preceding month.
This affiant did not know that Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, had
left the second floor and had moved up into the identical room 545,
but your affiant is informed that such is the fact. And this affiant
did go to room 545, believing that she was approaching the room of
Miss Arnold and not knowing that she was approaching the room of Agnes
Barrett, alias Madame Barette, and knocked on the door, the exact time
of which this affiant does not know, but believes that it was in the
neighborhood of half past six o'clock in the evening.
This affiant says that a man stepped out of said room and asked this
affiant what she wanted, and this affiant said she wanted to see
Miss Arnold. The man said, "Is it about anything in particular?" and
this affiant said, "It is about lace," and the man said that she was
expecting this affiant, and to wait a minute. He talked to somebody in
the room and then came out and said Miss Arnold was in the bathroom,
and this affiant said she would wait until she came back.
The man said she was only brushing her clothes, and this affiant went
around to the bathroom and he followed her around, and this affiant
knocked at the door, which was a little ajar, and he pushed open the
door and pushed this affiant in the bathroom and put a wet handkerchief
in her mouth, on which handkerchief, this affiant says, there was some
burning stuff that was sweet, and it was "cold, but burning," after
which affiant says she did not know any more.
Affiant says that this was not the bathroom she was subsequently found
in, but was the bathroom around by Miss Barrett's room, that affiant
then thought was Miss Arnold's room.
Affiant further says she does not remember subsequent events until this
affiant woke up lying on a bed entirely undressed with the exception of
her stockings, and was being guarded by a man.
This affiant asked, "What is the matter with my head; what is the
matter here, and what is wrong?"
The man answered this affiant and said, "You are in Miss Barrett's
room; you told something that Miss Barrett did not want you to tell and
she is going to kill you, and if you scream we will kill you." At that
time this affiant saw nobody except the man himself.
He said he was going after Miss Barrett, who was in the hall, and he
went to the hall and locked the door after him, and then this affiant
looked for her clothes and could not find any, but found a pocketbook
belonging to her on the bureau, and there was a lead pencil in it, and
this affiant wrote on an envelope:
"I am at the Wellington hotel; come quick."
But did not sign her name in full, merely signing her first name,
"Ella," and then put it in an envelope, and after affixing two stamps
wrote on the outside, "Bellboy please mail this," and then got up on a
chair and threw it over the transom towards the next door, room number
547.
Affiant says that the reason she did not call on the telephone was
because she did not remember Mr. O'Donnell's telephone number and she
did not see any telephone, and that she could not have called on the
telephone anyway if this man was still outside, and she did not want to
alarm him or notify him, because he said she was not to move or get up,
and said that he would kill her if she got up from the bed.
Affiant says that at this time she had nothing on except her stockings,
and that when she got down from the chair she put Miss Barrett's spread
around her, and that man above referred to then came back in and asked
her what she had been doing and she replied that she had not been
doing anything. Affiant says that the man then attacked her. When she
screamed the man hit her on the head with his fist at the root of the
hair over the right eye, and the resultant wound was the wound found on
her by the doctors later.
Affiant further says that the man referred to then offered her ten
dollars after striking her, and tried to tear the spread off of her,
but that this affiant screamed for help, and that the man then got
a towel or some cloth and bound her mouth with a gag, and that this
affiant could not prevent said binding. Miss Barrett came in, and he
then sat down and wrote several letters or papers and watched this
affiant for several hours. Late in the night he presented some paper to
this affiant to sign and told her he would kill her if she did not, but
this affiant does not know what the paper was and has never heard of it
since.
This affiant further says that on the second occasion that the man
attacked her this affiant pulled the gag off her mouth and screamed for
help again, but the man bound her mouth, and she so sat with her mouth
bound until about two o'clock in the morning. Affiant says that there
was a knock at the door and the man put out the light and went to the
door, and that Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, and another woman
came in, and that the man asked the said Barrett what kept her.
Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, then asked the man if this affiant
was there yet, to which he replied yes, and that then the aforesaid
Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, said that she could not help
staying, saying something about a game of cards.
The man then asked the said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, if
she brought the wine with her, to which she replied that she had, but
that she did not have a corkscrew, and asked the man if he went out to
straighten up the bathroom, to which he replied that he did, and said
Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, then said that she went into the
bathroom as she was leaving the hotel and found a hatpin in it, and
that was all.
Affiant says that the man then gave the said Agnes Barrett, alias
Madame Barette, a pocket knife with a corkscrew in it, and that they
pulled the cork out of the bottle and drank some of the contents.
Affiant says she did not know what was in the bottle or whether the
wine was red or white. Affiant says that the said man, Agnes Barrett,
alias Madame Barette, and the woman that came with her as aforesaid had
lighted a candle before they opened the bottle, and that after they
had partaken of the contents thereof as aforesaid the man went out of
the room, but that previous to that he offered the said Agnes Barrett,
alias Madame Barette, fifty dollars, and that the said Agnes Barrett
said that was not enough.
Affiant says that that was all the man said at the time, and that he
then gave to said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, fifty dollars,
who did not then say any more, but took the money. That the man then
went out of the room and took the bottle with him, and also the candle
lighting the room. Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, then turned on
the light and came over to this affiant, who was sitting on the bed,
and removed the gag from affiant's mouth and said to this affiant:
"Didn't I tell you I would kill you if you would tell your lawyer the
things she told me."
"I did not tell the attorney," I replied. Agnes Barrett then asked
affiant if affiant had told him the man's name down at the Springs, to
which affiant replied that she had.
She then said: "Did you tell that interrupting beast?"
When I asked her who she meant, she said: "That other lawyer of yours."
I said, "I did not tell him anything."
I asked her who brought me there, saying that she did not remember
coming there.
The man then came in and said that he was going to fix my head and give
me something for it. They asked me to go to Miss Donahue's room and I
refused.
Affiant further says that Agnes Barrett then took two night-dresses
out of a paper and put one on her and then took her in to the man she
claimed was a doctor to the bathroom. The other woman came out of the
room after them and locked the door and brought the key with her, and
that they then all went into the bathroom.
This affiant says that Miss Donahue was talking over the back transom
to the man inside the bathroom. Affiant says that a candle was then
lighted in the bathroom and that Miss Donahue reached a little bottle
through the transom and told said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
to mix it.
Affiant said she did not know what it was and refused to take it,
whereupon the man poured it out in a glass and put it to this affiant's
mouth and made her drink it. Affiant says that she did not know who the
man in the bathroom was at that time, because he had a black mask tied
over his face, and that she did not know whether this man was a doctor
or not, but that Agnes Barrett called him doctor.
She further says that after drinking the medicine or drug, as above
stated, she became sick, and that Agnes Barrett then asked the man if
he had any knockout drops.
The man replied that he had not.
Agnes Barrett then said she had some, and went out of the room and
shortly afterward came back with what appeared to be candy. They then
made affiant drink more of the aforesaid wine and then told affiant
to eat some of the supposed candy in order to get the taste out of
affiant's mouth, and that she did so.
Affiant says the supposed candy was sweet and was hard on the outside
and soft on the inside, and was of a greenish color.
She says that after this she could not keep her eyes open and could not
remember anything more, but that they were still in the bathroom, and
when affiant awakened she was on the bathroom floor.
(Here the affidavit recites the revolting details, unprintable in
nature, which occurred in the bathroom on the fifth floor of the
Wellington hotel.)
The affiant says that when she awakened she was not yet tied, and that
the man had his coat off and his face uncovered. Agnes Barrett was
standing in the room. The affiant says that Madame Barette cut her on
the arms and wrists several times. She says she struggled and that the
other woman then asked the said Agnes Barrett why she did not tie the
affiant's hands, to which she replied that she did not have anything
there to tie them with, but that she then got the key to her room from
the other woman and went out, and returned with cords, etc., and that
the other woman then held the affiant's hands while Agnes Barrett
tied them behind the affiant's head, and tied them to the legs of
the bathtub, and that the man then tied the affiant's leg, which the
aforesaid Agnes Barrett held until he tied. She says that Agnes Barrett
then said that she had not got enough cords with her, but she had a
piece of black cloth or stocking, or something black, with which she
tied affiant's leg, and also tied her ankle with some sort of a cord.
She says that her left leg was left untied and that her mouth was also
tied. The affiant then says that the man and Agnes Barrett then both
attacked her.
She says that the strange woman held her shoulders to the floor and
Agnes Barrett held the leg that was loose while the man took the knife
and cut her several times. She says she did not bleed freely and Agnes
Barrett then ordered the man to cut her on the other side. The man then
assaulted her. He said he cut her to arouse his passions.
She says they were in the room for some time after that and that the
man then told Agnes Barrett to go for his overcoat, and she said for
him to come back at five o'clock.
Affiant further says that the said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette,
then asked the man to come to her room and stay the remainder of the
night, but he said no, that he had somebody to see before he left the
city.
Agnes Barrett then told the man to be there and awaken them when he
came at five o'clock, and not to sleep late, because she said he was to
have a cab with him to take this affiant to Louisville with him.
The affiant then declared that she would not go to Louisville with the
man.
Affiant then says Agnes Barrett put the neck of the bottle in her mouth
and made her drink the rest of the contents, and also gave her some
more of the supposed candy, and then tied up affiant's mouth again.
Agnes Barrett told the man to leave the light on so that the people
would think there was somebody in the bathroom, and they then left
affiant lying drugged on the floor of the room.
Affiant further says that the man then climbed up over the transom;
that she saw him get up; that she saw that he had one leg over, and
that she then could keep awake no longer; that she was sleepy and did
not know what happened after that.
Affiant further says that at the time the liquid was poured from the
little bottle into the big one, as above narrated, that the man told
said Agnes Barrett, alias Madame Barette, to scrape the label off the
bottle and she took the knife that the corkscrew was attached to and
scraped at the label of the wine bottle.
Affiant further says that after the man had attacked this affiant the
first time, as hereinbefore narrated, that the said Agnes Barrett,
alias Madame Barette, said to him, "Fifty dollars is not enough for
this girl," and he then said, "That is all I paid for the last one,"
and added, "Look at the bother you gave me with the last one," and she
said, "Yes, but you won't have any bother with this one."
This affiant further says there are many incidents and things that
happened from the time she was first seized in the bathroom until the
man climbed up out over the transom that she has not narrated in this
affidavit, but that she has told most of the occurrences; and also says
that the clothes she wore that night were later returned to her by the
police.
ELLA J. GINGLES.
Subscribed and sworn to before me this 15th day of March, 1909.
MARY E. JOYCE, _Notary Public_.
[SEAL.]
CHAPTER XI.
ELLA GINGLES ON TRIAL.
BY HAL M'LEOD LYTLE.
Was Ella Gingles, the little blonde Irish lace-maker, on trial for
stealing $50 worth of lace from Agnes Barrett?
Or was the city of Chicago on trial for permitting an unsophisticated
girl to be made the victim of a criminal corporation with its
headquarters in another state, as Miss Gingles has sworn?
No more remarkable case was ever tried in the criminal court of Cook
county, wherein some of the most amazing cases of which the world has
record have been heard and decided.
Ella Gingles was charged with larceny. Ella Gingles asserted that
the charge against her was inspired by an intent on the part of her
accusers to brand her a thief so that her story of the criminal
machinations of a gang operating in the interest of a combination
against law and order, with headquarters at an Indiana resort, might
escape the penalty of acts committed by its agents.
The jury which heard Ella Gingles' story was not misled by any
rhetorical bombast or alleged expert testimony covering the coined
phrase, "mythomania."
Miss Gingles was supposed to have the hysterical tendency developed to
the extent that she imagined things happened and then believed they had
happened.
There are such people, but they are not of the physical or mental
make-up of Ella Gingles. Dr. Krohn has had, no doubt, a vast experience
of hysteria, basing the theory on his Kankakee connection, but
he reckoned without the jury if he believed that the clear-eyed,
self-poised young woman who told that horrible story to the court
involving Agnes Barrett and Cecelia Kenyon with the "man in the velvet
mask," was a victim of hysteria.
The testimony of Ella Gingles was of a sort that might be heard in a
French court and understood. If it were heard in an English court, and
believed, the plaintiffs would be certain of twenty years at hard labor
without appeal.
In the criminal court of Chicago the prosecution was placed in a
strange position. Ella Gingles, charged with a crime against the state,
no matter by whom, it was the duty of the state's attorney's office to
prosecute her with all the resources of that office.
Across the river they are used to meeting steel with steel. They fight
with the weapons that the enemy uses. They perhaps become too inured
to the idea that everybody is guilty until proved innocent. Therefore
the cross-examination of Ella Gingles by Mr. Short, legitimate enough
if the young woman were the double-dyed criminal he appears to believe
her, fell short of its intended effect with the jury that leaned
forward, every man listening with hand over ear for the lightest word
of the softest-spoken witness the criminal court had seen in many a day.
Mr. Short was too clever an advocate to believe that the racking
cross-examination covering hideous detail of the behavior of Miss
Barrett and the dead Mrs. Kenyon, which brought tears to the eyes of
the shrinking witness, could add anything to the state's contention in
this case.
Ella Gingles was ingenuous to a fault. She answered questions put to
her in cross-examination without an instant's hesitation, and with
the utmost candor. An apparent discrepancy seized on by the lawyers
opposing her and questions thundered at her in denunciatory tone fell
flat. The question sounded subtle.
"Ah!" whispered the doubter in the spectator's row. "Here is where she
betrays herself."
Then, without an instant's pause, the girl told just what happened.
She had been told that she must talk out--just as though she were
talking to her mother--and so she told everything. It was a difficult
situation for a prosecuting lawyer.
But if Ella Gingles was ingenuous, Ella Gingles was no fool. She knew
that she was on the defensive.
Still, it was not to be wondered at that the Ella Gingles case proved
a puzzle to the Chicago police and the state's attorney's office. The
young woman appeared to have a thorough knowledge of the pitfalls that
beset young womanhood in certain directions, and to be grossly ignorant
of those that girls of less maturity in Chicago might be expected to
avoid.
When, in the course of her examination, it developed that Ella Gingles
was thinking in the way of a foreigner in a strange place while the
state's advocate was cross-examining her as though she had been born
and bred in Chicago, or at least in America, the assurance of the
defendant charged with a crime was remarkable.
If at any time it should develop that Ella Gingles has lied throughout,
that she was never attacked in the Wellington hotel--that Miss Barrett
is not guilty of the charges made against her and that the weird story
of conspiracy was born in a clever brain, rehearsed and then put on
like any melodramatic bit for the delectation of a surfeited public it
will go hard with the girl.
Miss Gingles was gowned in the most simple style. Her fresh, unpainted
face and her wide-staring, innocent eyes were of the sort seldom
involved in a case of this kind.
When asked an involved question in cross-examination she half
hesitated, looked quickly at judge and jury, flashed a glance of
inquiry at her lawyer and blushed.
Blushing is an accomplishment. It impresses a jury tremendously. Miss
Gingles not only blushed, but she wiggled. With a glove twisted in her
hand, she had hesitated so long over the answer to a question involving
a disagreeable answer that the most dramatic of all situations had been
produced.
The court would wait, the audience would hang breathless, the
attorneys, standing up, would lean forward, while the witness tried to
find words in which to formulate a reply.
Then in three words the story would be told. The jury would lean back
and gasp. The judge would swing around in his pivot chair and assume
an air of unconcern. The attorneys would busy themselves with papers
and the audience would groan. Still Miss Gingles would sit there in the
witness chair unperturbed.
Could an innocent young woman sustain the horror of such a climax?
The jury that rendered the verdict of "not guilty" was a representative
one. They ranged from men high in the financial world to those of
low estate. In the days that they sat listening to the terrible tale
as unfolded by the little Irish lace-maker and the physicians they
appeared to be held as though spellbound.
It was a dramatic trial, filled throughout with thrills and shudders.
Sensation followed sensation. At no time during the long trial, which
cost the state of Illinois nearly $100,000, did the interest lapse.
It was for the jurors to decide the truth of this complication of
alleged happenings and as to the guilt of the little foreigner, charged
by her alleged persecutor with theft.
The important points on which Madame Barrett based her charges against
Ella Gingles were:
That Ella Gingles signed a confession December 6, 1908, admitting she
was a department store thief.
That she stole valuable lace from her and used the lace in the new
dress.
That the lace-maker's injuries were self-inflicted.
Combatting this, the little defendant and her stanch friends swore:
That she was a victim of a conspiracy on the part of her accusers.
That her enemies attempted to make her a white slave.
That she was urged by Madame Barrett to accept money offered her by her
tempter.
That she was seized, bound and horribly mistreated in the Wellington
hotel, as the result of her refusal to accede to Madame Barrett's
demands.
That the Barrett woman forced open, or caused to be forced open, her
trunk and took therefrom laces and valuable keepsakes and personal
properties belonging to her.
It was charge met by charge.
During the long hearing Madame Barrett sat alone. She seemed to have
been shunned. At no time did she lose her self-control. The most
violent charges seemed to affect her but little.
The girl would make some terrible charge from the witness stand. The
prosecuting witness would sit immovable. Her face did not blanch. It
did not color to a crimson red. Her eyes did not wander. Forever they
were gazing directly in front of her, yet without looking at any one
and anything.
It was the gaze and composure of a woman of the world--a woman who has
passed through horrors before and who has become immune.
After the jury had been selected Miss Gingles was released on bond.
Previous to this time she had been confined in the county jail at her
own request, as she charged her enemies were still following her and
she feared they would do her injury.
At the opening of the first session of court First Assistant State's
Attorney Benedict J. Short made a short address.
"Miss Gingles, and not Miss Barrett, is on trial here. You must try
this case on the evidence alone," said Mr. Short.
Attorney O'Donnell declared he would show that Miss Gingles was the
victim of a plot instigated by an alleged agent representing an
influential Indiana Democratic politician.
Here are a few samples of questions asked veniremen by Attorney
O'Donnell of the defense:
"Are you married?"
"Have you any sisters?"
"Have you read about this case?"
"Miss Gingles is Irish--does that make any difference?"
"Would it make any difference if Miss Gingles belongs to a different
religion than you do?"
Assistant State's Attorneys Short and Furthman questioned prospective
jurors along these lines:
"Do you know anything about the Irish lace store?"
"Did you ever stop at the Wellington hotel?"
"Can the state accept you as a juror with confidence that you will do
your full duty and not be swayed by outside influences?"
When Attorney Patrick H. O'Donnell, her counsel, entered the courtroom
he held a short conference with Assistant State's Attorney Short.
While they were talking Miss Gingles entered the courtroom, accompanied
by a deputy sheriff.
"We desire to have Miss Gingles admitted to bail," said Mr. O'Donnell.
"I am very willing, I always have been willing that Miss Gingles should
be free on bail," replied Mr. Short.
There was another short conference, after which Mr. Short said: "We
will accept you as Miss Gingles' surety."
Thereupon Miss Gingles tripped lightly up to the clerk's desk and wrote
her name on the bond. Mr. O'Donnell also affixed his signature to the
$2,000 bond and the pretty defendant was freed from the attentions of
the officer.
Ella Gingles presented a picture of fresh, girlish beauty as she took
her place in front of the jury box.
She wore a white linen suit, with a long coat. The collar and cuffs
were trimmed with blue ribbon. A tan straw hat, tam o'shanter style,
was patched by brown ribbons and roses. Her brown hair, in curly puffs
and waves, fell below her ears and tumbled bewitchingly over her eyes.
The scene in the courtroom at the criminal court when Ella Gingles took
the witness stand to relate her terrible story was one never to be
forgotten.
As the little lace-maker's name was called and she rose to walk past
the jury to the witness stand fifty women seated in the back part of
the courtroom rose and began to clap their hands. Some threw their
handkerchiefs into the air.
The girl seemed much affected by the demonstration. Judge Brentano
seemed taken aback for a moment by this unusual outburst. In vain
the bailiff pounded with his gavel for order. Finally the court was
compelled to rise and sternly rebuke the courtroom in no uncertain
terms.
Miss Gingles began her story in a low tone. It was the voice of a
schoolgirl telling of something she had undergone, but could not
comprehend. The persons in the courtroom hung on every word. You
could have heard a pin fall. As Miss Gingles took the stand Attorney
O'Donnell said:
"State your name."
"Ella Gingles," the witness replied, in a voice that rang out through
the courtroom. She said she would be nineteen years old next November.
She was born in Ireland. Her father's name is Thomas, and she has
seven sisters and several brothers. She said she came to America in
November, 1907.
"Did you make Irish lace?"
"Yes."
She identified a design shown her as one she made when eight years old.
"Who made the hat you are now wearing?"
"I did."
The hat was a peach-basket affair. A design of lace was shown her and
she said she was the maker, as well as the designer.
She testified she won prizes in Ireland for fancy lace-making. She said
she originated several designs.
Miss Gingles said she remained in Montreal two days, later going to
Belleville, Ontario, where she worked as a cook. From there she went to
Toronto. She visited a sister in Michigan, coming direct from there to
Chicago about November 15, 1908.
"What did you do here?"
"I went to work as a chambermaid at the Wellington hotel. I stayed
there a week."
"What did you next do?"
"I went there to meet some fine lady to sell laces to, and quit the
work and sold them."
"Where did you next work?"
"At a Michigan avenue restaurant, but quit after four days."
"When and how did you meet Agnes Barrett?"
"I went to her store and showed her my lace."
At the mention of her name Miss Barrett looked straight into the eyes
of the girl she accused, and Miss Gingles returned the glances without
coloring.
"Miss Barrett gave me some roses to work on," resumed the witness. "She
gave me $1 and then I made some berries and more roses."
Miss Gingles said she continued to work for Miss Barrett, receiving
$1 per day. Altogether she worked four days for Miss Barrett before
Christmas.
"Did Miss Barrett say in your presence and a maid that she missed
things?"
"She said she missed some powder and paint and some Limerick laces."
Miss Gingles seemed confident, and began to smile as she testified. On
January 4, she said, she returned home at seven o'clock, and found Miss
Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon in her room.
"Is Mrs. Kenyon living or dead?"
"Dead."
Attorney O'Donnell dropped this line of questioning and inquired
further as to what occurred on that evening.
She said Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon took practically everything
of value from her trunk, including prize lace designs, underwear,
photographs, bracelets, strips of chiffon and a ring.
"Was the ring valuable?"
"It cost 15 cents in Ireland, but Miss Barrett said: 'It must be
valuable or it wouldn't be in a costly box.'
"Besides, they trampled my clothes in the dirt and greased what they
left with candles."
"What else did they take?"
"A fancy pillow case I made on a ship."
The most startling part of the girl's story was of the alleged attack
upon her in the Wellington hotel, although her testimony was the story
of her life practically from the time she came to America from Ireland.
Miss Gingles, in her testimony, declared that it was she, and not Miss
Barrett, that had been robbed, and she told a story of how her room at
474 La Salle avenue had been broken into and ransacked in her absence
and many valuable pieces of lace taken.
She declared that the robbery was made complete by Miss Barrett the
same night in the Wellington hotel by taking all the money out of her
purse and forcing her to walk back to her boarding house from downtown
in the cold of a winter's night.
She said that on this night she was forced to sign a confession,
admitting the theft of lace for which the girl now is being tried.
Her story of the attack upon her in the Wellington was the most
remarkable ever heard in the criminal court building, and during it
there were many outbursts from the spectators.
Miss Barrett, her accuser in the theft charge, was as agitated as the
witness, and several times seemed on the verge of breaking down.
Attorney Patrick H. O'Donnell made good his declaration that the story
of Miss Gingles concerning her treatment in the Wellington hotel would
be told under oath from the witness chair.
Step by step the lawyer led the girl.
"She offered me money; advised me to take the money the man offered me
whom she had brought to the room when I was helpless. She choked me,
threatened me, and finally accused me of stealing and made me sign a
confession before she would permit me to leave the room."
These were some of the accusations sobbed out by the lace-maker.
Time and again there were seeming admissions forced from the girl's
lips which Mr. Short hoped would lay the foundation for impeachment of
the most sensational sort.
There was a short delay, owing to a number of emergency matters set
before Judge Brentano. Then Mr. O'Donnell resumed the questioning of
Miss Gingles as follows:
"In Captain O'Brien's office when this necklace was produced, what did
you say?"
"I said it was my necklace," answered the witness.
"Did Captain O'Brien say anything about you proving that it was your
necklace?"
"Yes. I told him that Daisy Young of Belleville, Ontario, could prove
that the necklace was mine," answered Miss Gingles.
"Did you write to Daisy Young?"
"Yes."
"Did she answer your letter?"
"Yes."
"Did you show the letter to Captain O'Brien?"
"Yes."
"Have you the letter Daisy Young wrote?"
"Yes; here it is."
"Now, I'll read it," said Mr. O'Donnell.
"No, you won't; I object," said Assistant Prosecutor Short.
"Sustained," said Judge Brentano.
"But I want to show that Captain O'Brien's suppressed evidence is
contradicted by this letter," returned Mr. O'Donnell.
"There is no rule of evidence whereby such a letter could be
admissible," replied the court.
"Did you meet Mary Brennan at the door of Miss Barrett's room as she
testified?"
"Yes."
"Now, tell the jury if there was any property in your room that didn't
belong to you?"
"Yes, a towel from the Wellington hotel."
"Did you tell Captain O'Brien?"
"Yes."
"When you went to Miss Barrett's room what happened?" asked Attorney
O'Donnell.
"Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon went with me, and Mrs. Kenyon whispered
something into my ear. Then Mrs. Kenyon told me I had to take off my
clothes. I told her I would do nothing of the sort. Then Miss Barrett
and Mrs. Kenyon took off my clothes and made me go to bed. Then Miss
Barrett told me that she wanted me to go to French Lick Springs,
Indiana."
"Did she tell you what she wanted you to go there for?" asked Mr.
O'Donnell.
Here Miss Gingles began to cry.
"Don't do that, Ella," said Mr. O'Donnell.
The girl made revolting charges against both Agnes Barrett and Mrs.
Kenyon.
"What happened then?" was asked.
"Why, Miss Barrett offered me a silk dress if I would do as she told
me."
"Did she show you the dress?"
"Yes."
"Tell what happened," urged the attorney.
"Mrs. Kenyon said to Miss Barrett: 'Where is the other girl? We
promised them to bring two girls here.'"
"Did any men enter the room?"
"Yes, one man came in."
"What else happened?"
"Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon held me."
"Did the man offer you any money?"
"Yes, but I wouldn't take it."
"Did Miss Barrett tell you to take it?"
"Yes."
"Was the light burning?"
"Yes, but when the man came in Miss Barrett turned it off."
"Did you know at the time that Miss Barrett had gone to your room
and taken the lace and other articles that you are now charged with
stealing?" asked Mr. O'Donnell.
"No, sir."
"Did Miss Barrett say anything to you that night about losing lace?"
"Yes, and she said I had stolen it. I told her it was a lie."
"What did Miss Barrett say?"
"She had a paper and said I would have to sign it and admit that I had
stolen the lace. I refused to do it."
"What did she say?"
"She said if I didn't sign it she would call that man back again. Then
I signed it."
"Did you call Miss Barrett any names that night?"
"Yes, I told her that she was a beast and that Mrs. Kenyon was another."
"Tell the jury what you did."
"I tried to scream, but Miss Barrett put a towel over my mouth and she
said if I screamed again she would choke me."
The girl declared that Mrs. Kenyon and Miss Barrett had prevented her
resisting the man.
She declared she had cried and when she went home she asked two women
to call a policeman. "They told me to go to Captain O'Brien's office
the next day and I did," said Miss Gingles.
"Did you have any money?" was asked.
"No, Miss Barrett took all my money out of my purse."
"How did you get home to 474 La Salle avenue?"
"I ran home."
"That's all," said Attorney O'Donnell.
"Did you run all the way home?" was the first question by Prosecutor
Short on cross-examination.
"Yes, ran or walked."
"Which way did you go?"
"I ran out in Jackson boulevard and ran west on the north side of the
street," answered Miss Gingles.
"Did you see any people while you were running?
"I didn't notice many."
"How did you go down stairs?"
"I took the elevator."
"Didn't you know there was a policeman in the Wellington hotel?"
"No, I didn't see any policeman."
"There were lots of people in the hotel office, wasn't there?"
"I didn't stop to notice."
"You didn't have any money to pay your car fare?"
"No; Miss Barrett had taken all my money."
"You saw people in the streets, but you didn't stop and tell any of
them to call a policeman?"
"No."
"What time did you leave the Wellington hotel?"
"At twenty-five minutes to twelve o'clock."
"How long did it take you to get home?"
"About twenty minutes."
"What was the first thing you did when you got home?"
"I saw Mrs. Linderman, the landlady."
"Where was she?"
"In the basement."
"What was the first thing you said to Mrs. Linderman?"
"I told her that an awful thing had happened. Then I told her all."
"What did you do then?"
"I asked her how I could get a policeman, and she said it was too late
and to wait till the next day. Then I went upstairs to see another
woman and told her the same thing, and she said I had better wait and
go to see Captain O'Brien the next day."
"Then what happened?"
"Mrs. Linderman went with me to my room, and there I found that my
trunk had been broken into and most of my things taken. I showed Mrs.
Linderman what had been done."
"That was when Miss Barrett had gone to your room and taken the lace
and other things which she claimed you had stolen?"
"Yes."
"You went to see Captain O'Brien the next day, did you?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell him that you had been attacked?"
"No."
"You didn't mention anything, not to a man anyway, about what you have
related as occurring in Miss Barrett's room?"
"No."
"Just told them you had been robbed of $100 worth of lace?"
"Yes."
"Did you tell anybody--any of the policemen who went around with you,
about it?"
"No, I couldn't tell that awful story to anybody."
"This confession you signed to Miss Barrett wasn't the first confession
you ever signed, was it?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm positive."
Here Prosecutor Short produced the first sensational attack upon Ella
Gingles.
"Didn't you sign a confession that you had taken goods from a
department store?"
"No."
"How old do you say you are?"
"I am eighteen."
"Look at this signature signed December 6, 1908--is that your
signature?"
Here Mr. Short produced a paper purporting to be a confession that Ella
Gingles had made, when accused of theft in a department store.
"That is my signature," said Miss Gingles.
Her voice quivered. There was a gasp among the women who had flocked to
the courtroom to lend their moral aid to the accused girl.
"Let's see," said Mr. Short, mercilessly. "At the very outset this
paper says--your admission--that you were then twenty years old."
"No, sir," interrupted Miss Gingles.
"Here, look at it; there it is, twenty years old."
"I told them I was eighteen."
"You have said you were born in Ireland?"
"Yes."
"But this document says--your admission--that you were born in London."
The witness made no answer.
Mr. Short attempted to offer the document in evidence, but was
temporarily prevented by a ruling of the court.
"You say you were a good girl--a perfectly good girl--up to the time
you met Agnes Barrett?"
"Yes; oh, yes, sir," sobbed Miss Gingles.
"You lived in Belleville, Ontario, before coming to Chicago?"
"Yes."
"As Ella Gingles?"
"Yes."
"What! Didn't you call yourself Ella Raymond?"
"No."
"Did you know a Dr. Gibson there?"
"No, sir."
"Didn't he attend you when you were ill?"
"He did not; he did not."
Mr. Short intimated that this part of the girl's testimony would be
impeached by testimony of the physician.
"It was under the auspices of that woman's guild at Belleville,
Ontario, that you went to work for Mrs. Thornton?"
"Yes."
"No white slave about that?"
"No."
"Was that Mrs. D. S. Thornton?"
"Yes, sir."
"You never had any trouble with them?"
"No."
"When were you taken ill?"
"About two months later."
"What was the doctor's name?"
"I don't remember."
"How long were you at the hospital?"
"I don't remember."
"Didn't the nurse and Mrs. Thornton object to having you go back to
work?"
"No."
On this point the witness was quite positive.
Then Mr. Short described the Thornton house and asked the witness if
she didn't know that up in the attic much linen was stored.
Miss Gingles said that she didn't know about it. She described the
marking on the linen, and then was asked:
"If Mr. Thornton said you took linen from his house, he is wrong?"
"Yes, sir."
"Would you know his handwriting?"
"Yes."
Then Mr. Short showed her the letter from Mr. Thornton that Captain
O'Brien had.
"That is his handwriting, but the letter is not true," said the witness.
Then Mr. Short returned to the baby clothes that were found in Miss
Gingles' trunk.
"How long have you had these baby clothes?"
"About four months."
"How much larger were you going to make these clothes?"
"Just a little larger."
"Why didn't you start at these?"
"I was waiting for a job."
"You had lots of time?"
"Yes, but I had to work at lace-making to support myself."
"When you were at the Thornton house didn't the family go away?"
"Yes, to Quebec."
"And didn't you have a photograph taken in one of Mrs. Thornton's lace
dresses?"
"No, sir."
Then Mr. Short showed her a picture of herself taken by R. McCormick of
Belleville.
"That is an enlargement of a photograph that I had taken in Ireland,"
said Miss Gingles.
"You didn't have this taken in Belleville?"
"No."
"When you went back to the Thornton home from the hospital did the
doctor go back with you, or did you ask him to speak to them?"
"No."
"Where did you come from to Chicago after leaving the Thorntons?"
"I went to work for Mrs. Lindquist in July and went to Toronto with
her, and then went to Bangor, Michigan, and then to Chicago."
"Where did you go when you went to Chicago?"
"To Mrs. Linderman's house."
"Didn't you have a room at 300 Indiana street?"
"Yes; I roomed with Mrs. Rice."
"No trouble there, did you?"
"No."
"Where did she work?"
"In the Wellington hotel."
"What did she do?"
"She was the linen girl."
"How far is 300 Indiana street from 474 La Salle avenue?"
"Half a dozen blocks."
"You went into Miss Barrett's lace store for the first time in
November?"
"Yes."
"Was that before you went to work in the Wellington?"
"Yes."
"Did you see Miss Barrett?"
"Yes."
"Do you know Mrs. Kenyon's sister?"
"Yes."
"Did you have any conversation with anybody there about your mother in
Ireland?"
"No."
"Did you tell Miss Barrett that your mother had given you £200 to come
to the country for a good time and that you had lost it on the way to
the boat?"
"No, sir."
"Did you tell Miss Barrett that you lived at the Wellington hotel?"
"Yes."
Then, prompted by Miss Barrett, Mr. Short put the witness through a
long questioning regarding the different kinds of lace.
It was a duel of lace-making knowledge between Miss Gingles and Agnes
Barrett, but Mr. Short failed to secure any important admissions.
A queer incident occurred after the adjournment. Ella Gingles, who was
formerly kept a prisoner in the county jail, and who was released on
bail, ran from the witness stand into the arms of several women who are
befriending her. Agnes Barrett, white and desperate at the charges made
against her, ran back from the advancing throng of women.
The accuser of Ella Gingles ran past the jury out of the room by the
prisoners' door--the door used by Ella Gingles to enter and leave the
room under the escort of a negro deputy sheriff.
Miss Barrett hurried down the stairs and into the office of Mr. Short.
Among the women who were with the lace-maker were Mrs. T. G. Kent,
president of the Daughters of the Confederacy; Mrs. Van Dusen Cooke of
the Socialist Women of the United States; Mrs. M. C. Brem of the Social
Economics Club; Mrs. Lyman Cooley of the Evanston W. C. T. U.; Mrs.
Mollie Benecke, Irish Choral Society; Dr. M. V. Maxson; Mrs. Margaret
Inglehart; Mrs. Frances Hagen, and Mrs. Frances Howe, Children's Day
Association.
Testimony which was deemed favorable to Miss Gingles was given by
Captain P. D. O'Brien of the detective bureau, who was called by the
state. Captain O'Brien admitted that he had formerly been friendly to
Miss Gingles, and Attorney O'Donnell got it before the jury that he
had even suggested the employment of her present counsel.
The detective chief gave testimony which was thought to favor the
defendant. The witness declared that the first charge of theft was made
by Ella Gingles against Agnes Barrett of the Wellington hotel, and told
of an investigation by the police of a raid on Miss Gingles' home, 474
La Salle avenue, in which Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon took away some
lace and a watch and bank book belonging to the defendant.
His examination, conducted by Mr. Short, follows:
"Do you remember seeing Miss Barrett and Ella Gingles on January 5,
1909?"
"Yes. Ella Gingles came to my office and said she worked at the
Wellington hotel and that Mrs. Kenyon and Miss Barrett had gone to her
room at 474 La Salle avenue and took her watch, bank book and laces,
claiming she had stolen the lace. She said they had compelled her to
sign a statement that she had stolen the lace.
"I asked Ella Gingles if she stole the lace and she said, 'No.'
"I told her I thought it was funny that she should have signed the
statement.
"I sent for Miss Barrett and Mrs. Kenyon. The latter came. We had the
lace, watch and bank book taken to my office.
"What was the lace kept in?"
"A blue pillow case."
"Finally Miss Barrett came to my office and I had her and Miss Gingles
attempt to sort out the laces which they claimed were theirs. Then we
put the lace on a table and Miss Barrett and Miss Gingles both claimed
most of the lace. I told them they had better take the case to court. I
told Miss Gingles not to give Miss Barrett the lace if it didn't belong
to her."
"Miss Gingles did admit that some of the lace belonged to Miss Barrett,
did she?" asked Mr. Short.
"Yes, but she claimed that Miss Barrett or some of her friends took it
to her room. She denied having stolen it."
"What did Miss Barrett say about the watch and bank book?"
"She said she had lost other property and that she thought she could
keep it until her loss had been made good. I told her she couldn't do
that in my office."
"Was there any trouble over a necklace?"
"Yes. Miss Barrett claimed a necklace which she said she had bought in
New York. Miss Gingles denied the assertion and said she had brought
the necklace from Ireland."
The necklace was introduced in evidence.
Attorney O'Donnell began the cross-examination in an unusual manner,
which called for an equally unusual objection from Prosecutor Short.
"Good morning, captain," Mr. O'Donnell began, in his most dulcet,
honeyed tones.
"Good morning," returned the witness.
"I object," shouted Mr. Short.
"What for?" asked Judge Brentano, in astonishment.
"Oh, I don't care about Mr. O'Donnell's good morning, but to its
obvious purpose," said Mr. Short.
After some preliminary questions Mr. O'Donnell asked Captain O'Brien if
he remembered a statement made to him in the presence of Chief Clerk
William Luthardt of the police department, to the effect that when the
piles of lace were divided "Ella Gingles had the pile and Agnes Barrett
had the scraps."
Captain O'Brien said he didn't remember it that way.
"But the piles were about equally divided," said Captain O'Brien.
The witness' memory failed him on several points which had impressed
Mr. O'Donnell, and finally, when the lawyer became nettled, he snapped
this question across the table:
"You were the first person to suggest that I defend Miss Gingles--you
wanted me to defend her, didn't you?"
Objection by Mr. Short was promptly sustained.
E. C. Capon, manager of the Wellington hotel, then was called and asked
to identify a pass-key which the state claims was found in the Gingles
girl's room.
"That's a maid's pass-key," said Capon.
"Poof! I never had a pass-key--I never saw that one until I was
arrested," said Miss Gingles.
May Brennan, who came direct to Chicago from County Sligo, Ireland,
less than a year ago, was the next witness.
"What is your occupation?" asked Mr. Short.
"I'm a lace teacher."
"Did you try to get Miss Gingles a position in a department store?"
"Yes."
"Did any one ask you to befriend Miss Gingles?"
"Yes--Miss Barrett."
Then Prosecutor Short sprang his big surprise.
"Here is a piece of lace taken from Miss Gingles' room. Did you ever
see that before?" asked Mr. Short.
"Yes--I made it. That's my own make."
"What did you do with the original piece of lace?"
"I sent it to Miss Barrett at French Lick, Indiana, last summer."
"Do you know how Ella Gingles came to have this lace?"
"No."
"You didn't give it to her?"
"No. I gave it to Miss Barrett."
Witness then told of having seen Ella Gingles go to Miss Barrett's room
in the Wellington hotel early last January.
"Miss Barrett sent me up to her room and I saw Miss Gingles waiting for
somebody. Then a bellboy gave Ella Gingles Miss Barrett's pass-key and
we both went into the room."
Witness did not know how Miss Gingles came to demand the pass-key of
Miss Barrett's room, but was sure she went into the room when Miss
Barrett was absent.
Miss Margaret Donahue was then called. She is secretary of the
Wellington Hotel Company.
"Was any of your property found in Miss Gingles' room?" asked Mr. Short.
"Yes."
"Is this the property you refer to?" and Mr. Short waved before the
jury a pair of long, black, silk stockings.
"Yes--those are mine."
Mr. O'Donnell looked at Miss Gingles--the latter turned pink and the
jury gingerly examined the expansive hosiery that was passed over the
railing.
The strongest part of Mrs. Linderman's testimony came when she told
of having gone to the Wellington hotel February 17, the morning after
the bathroom episode. She found Miss Gingles delirious, in bed under
the care of a physician. Attorney Patrick H. O'Donnell and several
policemen were there, the witness declared.
"Tell the condition of Ella Gingles," commanded Attorney O'Donnell.
"She was crazy, crazy, crazy," declared Mrs. Linderman.
"What did she do?"
"She lay on the bed and screamed at the top of her voice."
"What did she scream?"
"She kept repeating, 'Oh, Miss Barrett! Don't let that devil-man
in here again! Don't let him kill me, Miss Barrett! Save me, Miss
Barrett.'"
Mrs. Linderman also told of how Ella Gingles, on the night of January
4, following the first alleged attack in the room of Miss Barrett
at the Wellington hotel, had come home in a disheveled, hysterical
condition.
"She told me that a terrible thing had happened to her and accused
Miss Barrett. But she was afraid to tell me because she said that Miss
Barrett had threatened to kill her if she told," said Mrs. Linderman.
Just before Mrs. Linderman, the mother, took the stand Tecla, her
thirteen-year-old daughter, preceded her. She swore positively that the
necklace which Miss Agnes Barrett accuses Ella Gingles of stealing was
a substitute.
She wore a school girl's dress of white muslin, with an over-yoke of
lace. Her hair was combed back from her forehead and tied at the back
with a white silk ribbon.
The little girl was somewhat confused and held up her wrong hand when
taking the oath. Her testimony follows:
"Do you know Ella Gingles?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did she ever live at your house?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have you ever seen her wearing jewelry?"
"Yes, sir; I saw her wearing a necklace of purple beads."
"How long after she came to your house did you see her wearing them?"
"I can't remember exactly."
"Where was it you saw her wearing the beads?"
"She was in the kitchen."
"You are sure you saw her wearing the beads?"
"Yes, sir. I remember it plainly."
"Was your mother in the kitchen at the time?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did she see Ella wearing the necklace?"
"Yes."
Cross-examined by Mr. Short, the youthful witness was trapped as to the
number of beads in the necklace held by the attorney.
"How many beads were there on Ella's necklace?" asked Mr. Stout.
"There were seven."
The prosecuting attorney produced the necklace alleged to have been
stolen by Miss Gingles from Miss Barrett.
"Is this the necklace Ella wore?"
"No, sir."
"What?"
"I say, no, sir. It is a different necklace."
"In what way?"
"This has five beads and Ella's had seven."
Mrs. Linderman, mother of Tecla Linderman, then took the stand. Her
testimony was sensational. She related the story of the night when Miss
Barrett and Miss Donahue visited the Linderman home in La Salle avenue
and ransacked the room of the little lace-maker.
Then she went into the details of the condition of Miss Gingles after
the happenings at the Wellington hotel. She declared that the girl
was a raving maniac when she went to the hotel on the afternoon Miss
Gingles was found bound hand and foot, with large gashes cut in her
body, in the bathroom of the hostelry.
"You were at home on the night Miss Barrett and the other woman called
to see Miss Gingles at the La Salle avenue home?" suggested Attorney
O'Donnell.
"Yes, sir," answered the witness.
"How long were the women with Ella Gingles--to the best of your
knowledge?" asked Mr. O'Donnell.
"At least two hours."
"Did Ella Gingles go away with the women?"
"Yes."
"What time did she return?"
"About twelve o'clock."
"What was her condition?"
"She was crying terribly. Her eyes were red and her hair was all
tumbled down. She said she had been treated horribly. She said she
couldn't tell me what was the matter, because they would kill her if
she told any one."
"What else happened?"
"We went to her room together and I saw that her clothes had been
dumped into a heap and were covered with candle grease. I helped her to
clean them."
"Ella Gingles didn't tell you what they did to her?"
"No."
"Wasn't your curiosity excited?" asked Judge Brentano.
"Yes, but what could I do? It was midnight."
Mr. Short then asked the witness how she came to go to the Wellington
hotel February 17, following the alleged attack in the bathroom.
"Mr. O'Donnell came to my house with a man in an automobile, and told
me Ella Gingles was being murdered in the Wellington hotel," replied
Mrs. Linderman.
Then came some testimony calculated to embarrass Attorney O'Donnell.
"You went direct to Ella Gingles' room, didn't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"She was in bed?"
"Yes, sir."
"And Mr. O'Donnell was sitting near the bed?"
"Yes, sir."
"And Mr. O'Donnell had his arms around Miss Gingles?"
"Yes, sir."
"And Ella Gingles had her arms around Mr. O'Donnell?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who went with you to the room?"
"Miss Joyce."
"Oh, you didn't go direct to the Wellington hotel from your home to the
Wellington when you heard that Ella Gingles was being murdered?"
"No. I went first to Mr. O'Donnell's office."
"You say Ella Gingles was a raving maniac?"
"Yes. She acted as if she were under the influence of some dope."
"Dope? Where did you hear that word?"
"I read it in the medical books," was the surprising answer.
"Did Ella Gingles talk to Mr. O'Donnell?"
"Yes."
"What did she call him?"
"Mr. O'Donnell."
"Did she call him by his first name?"
"No, sir."
"How long were you in this room?"
"An hour, at least."
"Nobody suggested that she be sent to a hospital?"
"Did a physician come?"
"Yes."
"What did he do?"
"Ordered us all to leave the room."
"Did all go out?"
"I think so."
"Do you remember handling the cords with which Ella Gingles was tied?"
"Yes."
"How did you know she had been tied and that those were the cords?"
"A policeman told me."
"Were there any books in Miss Gingles' trunk?"
"Yes; I saw several books."
"Don't you know that Ella Gingles claims she never read but one book in
her life, and that one of Dickens' novels?"
"No; I don't know anything about that."
"Did you know that Miss Gingles was starving between January 4 and
February 16?"
"Yes; I heard she was hungry."
"Did you give her anything to eat?"
"Yes; several times I gave her coffee and toast. I knew she had no
money."
"You would have given her money if you knew she were starving in your
home?"
"I had no money, but I didn't take her room money."
A sharp clash took place between Attorney O'Donnell and Judge Brentano
when the lawyer objected to one of Prosecutor Short's rapid-fire
questions.
"I'll rule it out if you are invoking the strict rules of evidence, but
it is pretty late to invoke them now," said Judge Brentano.
"I'll invoke the rule and take exception to the court's remark,"
answered the attorney.
"Save your exception," retorted Judge Brentano.
A few minutes later Mr. O'Donnell began questioning Mrs. Linderman
regarding the letter which was received by Miss Joyce and telling of
her alleged tortures which resulted in her being found bound and gagged
in a Wellington hotel bathroom.
"I object! This isn't proper. I'm invoking the strict rules now," said
Mr. Short.
"Sustained," said Judge Brentano.
"Give me the letter, then," snapped Mr. O'Donnell.
"Say please," replied Mr. Short, holding the letter teasingly.
"Please. Being attorney for the Chinese, I'll 'kow-tow' to you," said
Mr. O'Donnell, solemnly making the Chinese salutation to royalty.
A few minutes later Mr. Short objected again.
"That's only a self-serving declaration," he declared.
"Who does it serve?" sarcastically inquired Mr. O'Donnell.
"It serves you," was the prosecutor's quick retort.
"Oh, indict me, why don't you?" rejoined Mr. O'Donnell.
"I will if I get anything on you."
"Yes, and you probably will whether you get anything on me or not,"
said Mr. O'Donnell, angrily.
"Yes--oh, no, I won't," and Mr. Short corrected himself quickly.
Belle Carson, 32 Goethe street, was then called and swore that Ella
Gingles had gone to her room on the night of January 4 and that the
girl had asked her about getting a policeman.
"I told her the names of two judges I knew."
Miss Carson told how Ella Gingles had brought some lace to her room and
told her how Irish lace was made. Miss Carson at that time had a room
at 474 La Salle avenue.
"I went to Miss Gingles' room and saw the laces which she was making."
"Were they large or small?"
"Small."
Tom Taggart, the Indiana politician, and former Democratic national
committeeman, appeared as a voluntary witness to clear his name of
charges made in the defense of Ella Gingles.
Mr. Taggart was treated with the utmost deference. Other witnesses
may have been "ragged" by counsel for both sides, but Taggart was
immune from even being asked to repeat his testimony or to give any
explanations.
Mr. Taggart told a straightforward story and it consisted mainly in
denying that he knew Ella Gingles or that he had ever known Agnes
Barrett except in a business way through her lace business at French
Lick Springs, Indiana.
The rest of his testimony was given over to proving that he is an
utterly unsophisticated Indianian, and when asked about the alleged
"white slave" traffic he innocently asked:
"What is a 'white slave'?"
Mr. Short gave the definition, without even cracking a smile.
When Mr. Taggart had been enlightened he declared that there were no
"white slaves" in his hotel in French Lick.
"We don't let any bad characters stay in the hotel if we know them. My
hotel is perfectly respectable; it is patronized by the best people in
the United States, from Maine to California," he declared.
Mr. O'Donnell was equally careful not to ruffle the temper or feelings
of the witness. He asked a few perfunctory questions and said, "That is
all, Mr. Taggart."
Mr. Taggart, however, wanted to talk some more. Turning to the court,
he said:
"Your Honor, I came here as a voluntary witness."
"Of course you did," put in Mr. Short.
"And I wanted to vindicate my name. There was so much said in the
papers when Miss Gingles made her statement--I just wanted to come and
put things right," was the gist of the explanation volubly made by Mr.
Taggart.
It developed that Mr. Taggart has kept two detectives employed since
the opening of the trial to report to him the developments, especially
as they related to the use of his name in the testimony.
Dr. H. A. Watson, 4358 Lake avenue, and house physician at the
Wellington hotel, followed Mr. Taggart on the witness stand.
"On February 17, were you called to attend Ella Gingles?"
"I object!" shouted Attorney O'Shaughnessey.
"On what grounds?" asked Judge Brentano.
"It isn't relevant to the issue," replied Mr. O'Shaughnessey.
"If this case had been tried on merely relevant issues it would have
been finished in twenty minutes," retorted the court.
"Did you go to the bathroom on the fifth floor of the hotel?"
"Yes."
"What did you see?"
"The transom of the bathroom had been taken out and the door opened
from the inside. On the floor lay a girl. One knee was tied and one
foot fastened to the foot of the bathtub. Both hands were tied."
"Were they slip knots?"
"No. Hard knots. The feet were tied with cords and the knee with a
stocking."
"What was her condition?"
"She was not unconscious. The pupils of the eyes were widely dilated.
I asked her who her friends were and she asked me to send for Captain
O'Brien."
"What did she say?"
"She was crying, as hysterical people do. She kept saying, 'They threw
pepper in my eyes.'"
"'I can't drink any more wine.' She also said she was a friend of Mr.
O'Donnell."
"What did you do?"
"I examined to see if she had been attacked, and found there were no
such indications. I cut her loose and found she wasn't in a bad way.
Her pulse was good and she did not need medicine."
"How about her wounds?"
"They were scratches, and not cuts."
"When we took her to a room she kept crying and said, 'They cut me!
They threw pepper in my eyes and put me in a cab.'"
"We object to this form of questioning," said Mr. Short.
"The objection is sustained. The court will state why. You are asking
questions, Mr. O'Donnell, on matters that nobody can testify to unless
you take the stand yourself."
"Your honor," shouted the Irish lawyer, "I don't have to take the
stand, sir. My good wife will take it."
"Very good; then proceed," answered Judge Brentano.
"Now, as a matter of fact, did you not see this girl lying there on
that bed in a semi-conscious condition, so far from rational that I was
compelled to shake her to make her recognize me?"
"I saw you shake her. She did not appear to me irrational apart from
the hysteria."
"What position was Miss Gingles in when you found her in the bathroom?"
resumed Mr. Short, again taking the witness.
"She was lying on her right side and her body stretched from one end of
the bathtub. Her feet were tied to the iron pipe under the stationary
bowl. Her hands were tied to the iron foot at the end of the tub."
"Did you know Miss Gingles before?"
"No. I never saw her before."
"Was there anything much the matter with her aside from being
hysterical? Did you see the scratches on her arms and body?"
"Yes. Those scratches were very superficial. They did not more than
penetrate the first skin."
"Did you see a liquid in the bathroom?"
"Yes. I thought it was wine. Also there was a little bottle of
laudanum."
"Now, if this girl had taken laudanum, what would have been the
condition of the pupils of her eyes?"
"They would have been very much contracted."
By Mr. O'Donnell: "And tell us, had she a cut on the inside of the
thigh, running crosswise?"
"Yes, she had such a cut."
"There were many cuts, altogether?"
"I don't recall precisely how many."
Mr. O'Donnell dramatically seized Ella Gingles by the hand, almost
dragged her to the witness chair, and then demanded explosively:
"Did you see this cut, and this one, and that one and that one? Did you
really see any cuts?"
"Yes. I saw several cuts, but I cannot say that these are the scars
from them."
"Now, how many cuts did you find?"
"As I remember it, there were several on the arms and one on the leg."
"Which leg?"
"I do not recall."
"Did you see other bruises and injuries on the girl's body?"
"Oh, I remember generally that she was cut and scratched slightly, but
I did not regard any of the injuries as serious."
"Do you know that Ella Gingles had ten wounds altogether?"
"All I recall I have told you."
"How long were you in the bathroom with Ella Gingles before you untied
her?"
"Not more than a few minutes."
"Now, about this pink baby ribbon Mr. Short is trying to make out Ella
was tied with. Didn't you see me take it out of her nightgown?"
"I don't remember."
"Well, I took it out of her neck-band because she was tearing at
herself, didn't I?"
"Oh, I can't tell that."
"Did you see me take the gag off her?"
"It was hanging under her chin when I first saw her, but I don't know
who took it off."
"You remember a big crowd of newspaper men being in the room, don't
you?"
"Many people were there. I did not know many of them."
"How does it come that you say you took Miss Gingles out of the
bathroom at eleven p. m. when Captain O'Brien was called and told of
her condition at ten?"
"Well, I understood that you had been there and gone before I reached
there."
"Was one of her arms tied with a stocking?" asked Mr. O'Donnell.
"Yes."
"Had she her own stockings on?"
"No."
"What?"
"Well, I don't recall exactly. I don't think she had them both on."
"As a matter of fact, were there not three stockings? Did not Ella have
her own stockings on?"
"Well, I won't be positive about it."
"Was she brought to the bed in the same condition you took her from the
bathroom?"
"I believe she was."
"When you left you are sure she had on a black skirt?"
"Yes."
"And you are not sure whether she had on stockings or not?"
"No."
"Between the time you cut Ella Gingles loose and we got there were any
clothes taken off or put on Ella Gingles?"
"Not that I can remember."
Dr. Watson proved to have a bad memory. He couldn't remember who took
charge of the cords that bound Ella Gingles or what was done and said
after the girl was found in the bathroom.
Professor Henry J. Cox of the United States Weather Bureau was then
called by the state.
"What kind of a night was January 4, 1909?" asked Mr. Short.
"It was cloudy, and at eleven a. m. the temperature was fifty and at
midnight it was forty-five."
"Did it rain that night?"
"No, sir."
"But there was a mist, wasn't there?" asked Mr. O'Donnell.
"No such record."
"What kind of clouds were there?"
"Low, hanging clouds."
"When did the sky clear?"
"At four a. m."
"Let me look at that book," said Mr. O'Donnell.
"I'm not a--what do you call it--meterologist?" suggested Mr. Cox.
"Read the meter, Pat," said Mr. Short.
"Here. What's this? Why, the record shows there was rain that night!"
shouted Mr. O'Donnell.
Mr. Cox looked and saw the letter "T" opposite the temperature reading
for nine p. m.
"That means 'trace.' Yes, there was a trace of rain at that hour,"
admitted Mr. Cox.
When the case closed and the arguments were through the courtroom was
filled with wild, expectant people. It was a scene never equaled in
Cook county. Even the scenes of confusion in the trial of Dora McDonald
for the slaying of Webster Guerin were eclipsed.
The jury did not deliberate long. A few hours sufficed to reach a
verdict. There was some contention on the part of one juror, but he was
soon convinced that the verdict should be not guilty.
The scene when the verdict was handed to Judge Brentano was appalling.
The little Irish girl standing in front of the bar of justice, with
eyes looking straight ahead into those of the judge; the auditors
standing breathless awaiting the words that were to fall from his lips.
When the court read from the slip of paper, "We, the jury, find Ella
Gingles not guilty," bedlam broke loose. Men and women, many of them
richly dressed, rioted madly. Several of the clubwomen and members of
the Irish Fellowship Society ran to the girl's side and hugged and
kissed her.
For several minutes the court made no attempt to still the outbreak.
He, too, grim and stern, and used to tragedies in the court, seemed to
feel the joyfulness of the occasion.
"I'm so happy," the little lace-maker told her friends. "I was certain
I would be freed. It was a horrible plot against me, but with all my
friends working for me I knew I could not come to any harm."
After leaving the courtroom the girl was taken in a cab to the home
of a wealthy clubwoman on the south side. That evening hundreds
of supporters called to greet her and tell her of their joy at her
acquittal. Several of them joined together and presented her with a
small diamond brooch.
The next day the little lace-maker began making arrangements to return
to her old home and to her parents, at Larne, Ireland. There with her
family she expected to try to live down the horrors of her experiences
in Chicago.
CHAPTER XII.
THE RETURN HOME.
A clipping from the pages of one of Chicago's great newspapers we leave
to tell the last chapter of the life of Ella Gingles.
In its few words it tells chapters of the faith and confidence placed
in the Irish lace-maker by her friends in Chicago.
It was the last good-bye to the little foreigner before she sailed back
across the ocean to her waiting parents and friends in the town of
Larne, Ireland.
The clipping, published under the date of August 3, 1909, is as follows:
FRIENDS BID FAREWELL TO MISS ELLA GINGLES
_Impressive Reception for Acquitted Lace-maker
Is Given by Illinois Orangemen, Who
Present Bible and Purse._
"We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth;
in Jesus Christ, His Son, our only Mediator; in the Holy Spirit, the
Comforter, and in the Bible, His revealed will."
Quoting these words from the declaration in the constitution of the
Orangemen, adopted more than two hundred years ago, Robert F. Brown,
Illinois state grand treasurer of the order, presented a leather-bound
copy of the Bible to Ella Gingles. The Bible was the gift of the
Ladies' Loyal Orange Order of Chicago, and the presentation was the
climax of an impressive farewell reception given by the Illinois
organization of the Orangemen order at Hopkins' Hall, Sixty-third
street and Stewart avenue, to the young Irish lace-maker, who is to
leave Chicago next Sunday evening to return to the home of her parents
in Ireland.
On the fly-leaf of the book presented to the young girl, who had passed
through one of the most grilling experiences ever witnessed in this
country, was inscribed the following:
"Presented to Miss Ella Gingles by the 'Chosen Few,' Ladies' Loyal
Orange Order, Chicago, August 2,1909. May the Lord watch between me and
thee, while we are absent one from the other.--Mrs. Jane M. Herbison,
Mrs. Rebecca McKeag, Mrs. Sarah Doonan."
More than five hundred persons, friends of Miss Gingles, had crowded
into the hall, filling every available space. She sat throughout the
ceremonies, during which there were a number of addresses, with Mrs.
Mary Brem of the Catholic Woman's League, and at whose home at 5488
Ellis avenue she has been living since her acquittal.
William Russell, state grand master of the order, presided. Addresses
were made by Samuel J. McCarroll, past grand master; H. H. Van Meter
of the Chicago Law and Order League, and Rev. E. Keene Ryan of the
Garfield Boulevard Presbyterian Church.
Mr. McCarroll declared it was a blot upon the citizenship of Chicago
that conditions were such that a young girl found it necessary to
return to her home in Europe in order to be entirely safe.
Miss Gingles also was presented with $100, which was a part of a fund
raised by clubwomen in Chicago and by Rev. Mr. Ryan at a service at
his church on July 11. Out of the remainder of the fund the expenses
of the trip of Miss Gingles and Miss Grace Van Duzen Cooke, who is to
accompany her, are to be paid.
Miss Gingles will leave Sunday evening for New York, where she will be
entertained by a committee of Orangemen Tuesday and another committee
of the order will receive the girl and her escort upon their arrival in
Liverpool. Her home is in Larne, Antrim County, Ireland.
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Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are represented with _underscores_.
Questionable/archaic spellings have been retained from the original.
Page 35, added missing open quote before "Then the man would have been
introduced."
Page 58, pluralized "inmates" in "80 per cent of the inmates."
Page 68, added missing quote before "A well dressed Chinaman."
Page 69, added missing close quote after "They're no good."
Page 81, corrected "livered servant" to "liveried servant."
Page 82, normalized "orgie" to "orgy" ("night's orgy").
Page 84, removed duplicate "who" from "asked one who was dead."
Page 90, added missing close quote after "he is hard with people."
Page 92, corrected "Larne Co., Antrim" to "Larne, Co. Antrim."
Page 103, corrected typo "Agness" in "Agnes Barrett seemed to take an
interest."
Page 113, removed extra quote before "----" in "If only ----." Retained
inconsistent "Charley"/"Charlie" spelling from original.
Page 120, corrected typo "O'Shaugsnessey" in "convinced Mr.
O'Shaughnessey." Changed "grapevine" to "grape-vine" for consistency
with earlier appearance.
Page 127, corrected typo "alits" in "alias Madame Barette." Corrected
typo "O'Shaughnessy" in "also by John P. O'Shaughnessey."
Page 129, removed duplicate period after "in the neighborhood of half
past six o'clock in the evening." Corrected typo "bathoom" in "Arnold
was in the bathroom."
Page 133, corrected typo "leavng" in "she was leaving the hotel."
Page 135, corrected typo "repled" in "The man replied that he had not."
Page 159, corrected typo "O'Bren" in "went to see Captain O'Brien the
next day."
Page 161, added missing close quote after "I told them I was eighteen."
Page 163, removed unnecessary quote after "found in Miss Gingles'
trunk."
Page 165, added missing answer "Yes" after "Was that before you went to
work in the Wellington?"
Page 168, split "What was the lace kept in?" from "A blue pillow case."
and added missing close quote.
Page 171, hyphenated "pass-key" in "demand the pass-key" for
consistency.
Page 174, added space to "La Salle" and hyphen to "lace-maker" in "La
Salle avenue and ransacked the room of the little lace-maker" for
consistency with other appearances of those words.
Page 176, added space to "La Salle" in "Miss Gingles at the La Salle"
for consistency.
Page 179, removed unnnecessary quote after "rejoined Mr. O'Donnell."
Page 184, corrected period to question mark after "aside from being
hysterical?"
Page 191, corrected typo "Recepton" in "Impressive Reception for
Acquitted Lace-maker."
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