DETECTIVES ATTEND SERVICE.
Barry and Carroll planned to
effect an entrance to the "seance." Inspector Revere was informed and asked
to give a detail of six officers, who, headed by Detective Wooldridge, went
to the hall on Sebor street. Barry and Carroll had preceded them and
succeeded in convincing Jennie Nichols, who was the master of ceremonies,
that they were interested in spiritualism and desired to witness
the materializations.
When they went to the hall, Detective Barry
walked in and found twenty-eight or thirty others there before him. Jennie
Nichols was busy arranging the spectators in seats. She took a great deal of
care about placing them. Carroll and Barry entered and signed their
names on the register. This was a book in which everyone who is admitted
to a seance is requested to place his name and place of residence.
Barry signed as "John Woods"; address, 142 Ashland
boulevard.
CALLING UP THE SPIRITS.
When the seance opened
Jennie Nichols conducted those who were in the hall through the main room and
the one at the rear, before which the curtain was placed. Everything was all
right, so far as Detectives Barry and Carroll could see. The cabinet from
which the spirits were to come stood across one corner, and opposite it was a
door leading into one of the two rooms in the rear of the hall.
They
examined the cabinet and the rooms carefully, but found everything all right.
After they had been through everything the doors were locked and they
returned to their seats, Miss Nichols making some other changes in the
arrangements of the seats, and then the place was darkened.
When the
place had been made almost entirely dark, Jennie Nichols, the medium, began
pacing back and forth in front of the curtain. She rubbed her hands over her
head and eyes a number of times, and began to chant: "Come, O queen, O
queen."
When she began to call on the "queen" the spectators began to
get excited. Most of them appeared to be thoroughly familiar with
the proceedings, and several of them said: "Oh, I hope it's the
king."
Then the medium pulled a cord which was attached to a light
enclosed in a sheet-iron case, the one small opening of which was covered
with several thicknesses of green tissue paper. When she pulled the
string the room became darker than ever.
SPIRITS BEGIN TO
MOVE.
Before she began her incantations the medium had requested
everyone present not to cross their feet, and to try to assist her to bring
the spirits before them. She said that it would probably not be
possible to bring a spirit for everybody, but that if all helped her,
the spirits wanted by many in the audience would surely appear.
Then
she asked them all to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee," which they did, and
after a few more passes over her temples and in front of her eyes the spirit
began to move. The detectives could see it, and they began to think they had
been wrong in thinking there was nothing in spiritualism. It certainly
appeared real. First one form would glide back and forth in front of the
curtain, then an entirely different one would appear. Altogether there were
spirits of about ten men and children materialized.
As the apparitions
moved slowly in front of the curtain, in the spectral light which made it
impossible to detect more than a faint outline of the form, women rushed
forward crying out that it was their husband, or their child, that they saw.
They stretched out their hands to clasp the forms of their departed, but
Jennie Nichols and her male assistant would take them by their hands and tell
them they must not touch the spirit or it would fade away. You could get
within six inches of the figures, and peer into the faces as they passed to
and fro, but everyone was restrained from attempting to touch them. In
the ghostly light of the room the closest inspection could not
determine that the figures were frauds, so clever were they
disguised.
KEYS UP THE SPECTATORS.
While the detectives were
waiting for the materialization, a woman they knew entered the room. Barry
put his handkerchief up to his face for fear she would recognize him. They
wanted to know what was the matter with him, and Barry said that he guessed
he had something in his eye. They wanted to take it out, and he had to put
his handkerchief away. He thought he was discovered, but the woman,
Mrs. Ella Hoobler, 319 West Madison street, said nothing about him.
After they had arrested the Nichols woman, Mrs. Hoobler told Barry she
had recognized him when she first entered the room, but she thought he
was "bug" in the game, and said nothing.
After about ten
materializations of husbands and children had keyed the spectators up to a
high pitch, Mrs. Hoobler asked for the spirit of her daughter, Helen. In a
few minutes the figure of a young girl, clad in white from head to foot,
appeared before the curtain.
"Oh, Helen, my Helen!" Mrs. Hoobler
exclaimed, rushing to the apparition. "Oh, mamma!" came the answer in a
shrill falsetto voice.
[Illustration: Medium's Paraphernalia Seized by
Police in Raid.]
Jennie Nichols and the big assistant seized Mrs.
Hoobler's hands just as she was about to clasp what she believed to be the
spirit of her daughter in her arms.
"You must not touch it," Jennie
Nichols told her, "or the spirit will go away."
The poor, almost
frantic woman kneeled before the apparition. Barry thought it was time to get
busy, and he whispered softly to Carroll: "Watch out, there's going to be a
pinch." Then he threw on the flashlight and whistled for the squad outside to
come in.
Just as he did this the "spook" in front of him looked so
realistic that for the life of him he couldn't decide whether he was going
up against a real spirit or not. But he took a chance and grabbed for
it. Even when he had hold of it and knew it must be flesh and blood,
it seemed so slimy, with the white stuff rubbed over it, that he felt
his hair rising.
Just about that time the medium outfit got busy. The
big man who had been helping Jennie Nichols hold the hands of the people who
were trying to grab the spirits of their dead hit Barry over the head
with some sort of a club that knocked him to the floor. Jennie Nichols
put out the light entirely, grabbed Barry's flashlight and began
pounding him over the head with it. They went to the floor in a rough
and tumble scrimmage, the crowd on top of them, yelling and
screaming.
In the next room Carroll was busy, too. He got hold of Mrs.
Catherine Nichols, the mother, who had been helping with the show, and he
was beset by spectators who were incensed because the seance had
been broken up.
WOOLDRIDGE TAKES A HAND.
When Detective
Wooldridge and his detail broke down the doors of the hall and made their
entrance into the place it was pitch dark, and they had to strike matches
before they could separate the combatants.
After a semblance of order had
been restored in the place the premises were searched, and a most astounding
outfit of disguises discovered. Before this development the spectators, who
had been held in the place, were very angry with the officers, saying that
they had been attending the seances for the last two years; that they
knew Jennie Nichols as a medium had shown them the spirits of their
dead. When the officers produced Sarah Nichols, to whom Detective Barry
had held when he seized the "spook," they discovered that she had
been wearing a pair of sandal slippers with felt five inches thick
for soles; a pair of men's black trousers and the white shroud and
painted picture face of a young girl.
Attached to a pole in front of
her was a paper head, around which was a white shroud four feet in length.
Those in attendance believed this image to be the spirit of a believer's dead
relative. The "medium" had "spook" images of men, women and children, and
could produce them as circumstances demanded. The light was turned up, and
the contemptible imposition on credulity was exposed to twenty-six dupes, who
had been paying $1 apiece for the privilege of attending meetings of
the "spook" grafters for years. It was the greatest expose of
"spooks" that has been made in many years. A wagon load of masks, wigs,
false whiskers, tin horns, gowns with safety pins in them, skulls
and skeletons with cross-bones to match, were seized.
WOMEN REFUSE
TO TALK.
At the station the women refused to talk. Sarah Nichols, the
"spook," had donned a house dress before she was taken to the station.
Jennie Nichols, the "medium," was dressed in a neat black gown of
rich material. The mother appeared in a black skirt and a white
shirtwaist. The latter is a gray-haired woman apparently about 50 years old.
She wept copiously. Sarah Nichols also wept. In the scrimmage after
the arrest her ear had been injured, and it was bleeding when the trio
was booked at the station.
Jennie Nichols was the most composed of
all. She held a palm leaf fan in front of her face and above it twinkled a
pair of shrewd blue eyes. As she and her relatives were led from the private
room at Harrison street she even laughed, although her mother and her sister
were in tears, and her victims were denouncing her for having robbed
them, through their credulity, of hundreds of dollars, which many of
them could ill afford to lose.
WOOLDRIDGE MAKES GHOST WALK IN
POLICE COURT.
A "spook" sat on the bench with Justice Prindiville. He
made ghosts walk and graveyards yawn.
The "spook" was Detective
Clifton R. Wooldridge.
When Miss Sarah Nichols, "the ghost," Miss Jennie
Nichols, "the trance medium," and Mrs. Catherine Nichols, mother of the other
two known as the "overseer," appeared in court to answer to charges of
obtaining money by false pretenses through spiritualistic seances,
Detective Wooldridge crowded to the center of the stage.
He bore a
great board, on which were tacked white shrouds, grinning skulls and
cross-bones, the costume of an Indian, and other instruments of the medium's
trade.
"For the benefit of the public at large," he said,
addressing the court, "I ask permission to expose the methods of these
fake spiritualists."
The permission was given, and "Spook" Wooldridge
took the wool sack.
"SPOOK" WOOLDRIDGE DEMONSTRATES.
He lit
the punk with which the mediums were wont to light up the skull. He burned
incense. He put on a white gown.
"This is Carrie's garment," he said,
pointing to where "Ghost" Carrie, twenty-four years old and buxom,
stood.
He went through the whole performance, save the grease paint.
He started to daub his face with the stuff, which gave a ghostly hue, when
the justice interrupted:
"You needn't dirty your face, Friend Spook.
You've scored your points already." The "Spook" had, indeed.
Despite
the exposures, many women and a few men who had come to hear the cases,
expressed their devotion to the persons arrested and to
the "cause."
They finally became so demonstrative that Justice
Prindiville ordered the court room cleared of the "devotees."
"This is
not a matinee, a spiritualists' meeting or a circus," said the Justice. "Let
the devotees meet in the outer hall."
Fifty women, of all ages and many
conditions of life, stood with mouths wide open and eyes bulging as
Wooldridge went through his performance. They were the victims of the Nichols
women.
Jennie Nichols and Sarah Nichols were fined $100
each.
ARREST SOUTH SIDE MEDIUMS.
To conclude the record of the
day, Detectives Wooldridge and Barry, accompanied by two officers from the
Cottage Grove station, visited a seance given by Clarence A. Beverly and Mrs.
M. Dixon at Arlington hall, Thirty-first street and Indiana avenue. The
officers bought tickets and awaited the performance. After a lecture on
psychic problems by "Dr." Beverly and a programme of music rendered
by children, "Dr." Dixon took the rostrum and went through a series
of clairvoyant discoveries.
Among the things which she professed to
predict while in her "trance" was a prognostication which had not a little to
do with the developments of the evening. After she had pointed out a number
of persons in the audience and told what they had done or should do,
she discovered Wooldridge and singled him out.
"I see a man with
glasses who has his hands crossed over his knees," she said. "I am governed
by the spirit of John Googan, an Irishman. He gives you a message," pointing
to Wooldridge, "and says that whatever John orders must be done."
At
this Wooldridge, arising from his seat, advanced to the
rostrum.
OFFICER SERVES PAPERS.
"John Collins, chief of
police, says, Mrs. Dixon, that I am to put you under arrest under a state
warrant charging you with receiving money by a confidence game. I also have a
warrant charging the same offense against Clarence A. Beverly. Dr. Beverly,
please come forth."
Dr. Beverly presented himself, and both he and Mrs.
Dixon were taken to Harrison street, where strenuous efforts on their behalf
on the part of "Dr." Harry H. Tobias, spiritual mental healer, with
offices at 118 East Thirty-third street, and others, failed to procure
them bonds.
The arrest of Beverly and Mrs. Dixon was made on a warrant
signed by Miss Miller, who had entered into correspondence with them
from her home in Portland, Ore. The fee in Chicago was to have been
$50, according to the letters she received from the mediums, as in
the preceding instance. She borrowed money to come to Chicago, and had but
$25 to pay the "healers." When she received no benefit from their treatment
she made complaint and was threatened with violence, she alleges. Thereupon
she laid her case before Chief Collins, resulting in the raid and the closing
up of this place.
Thus did the sleuth a-sleuthing vanquish the ubiquitous
"spook," the "ghost," the "spirit," the re-incarnation, the Mahatma, the
"sending," and all the hosts of the immaterial world, whose immaterialism
was being converted into good hard material cash by the producers of
the evanescent shapes from beyond the veil.
Thus did Clifton R.
Wooldridge and his able assistants make "spooking" a dangerous business in
Chicago.
WIFE OR GALLOWS?
PREFERS HANGING TO LIVING
WITH HIS WIFE.
Hugo Devel prefers being hanged to living with his
wife.
Unable to escape her in any other way, lacking the courage or nerve
to kill himself, and shuddering at the idea of life imprisonment with
the woman he had promised to love and cherish, he confessed to a murder he
did not commit, and was ready to go upon the gallows or to penal servitude
for life in the stead of the real murderer.
[Illustration: HE'D RATHER BE
HANGED THAN LIVE WITH HIS WIFE.]
Now he is free, and miserable, and in
his home at Lubeck, in Germany. He is envying Franz Holz, who is awaiting the
gallows.
Devel admits sadly that he had a double purpose in wanting to
die on the gallows. First, that he would escape his wife; and, second,
that, by being hanged he would make it improbable that any other man
should meet his fate--not his fate on the gallows, but his fate in
having wedded Frau Devel.
The case, which was cleared up by the
Hamburg police, furnished a problem that would have defied the cunning of
Sherlock Holmes and all his kindred analysts. Briefly stated, the facts in
the case, which is the strangest one ever given to a detective department to
solve, are these:
WOMAN WAS ROBBED AND MURDERED.
A few
months ago a certain Frau Gimble, of Munich, was cruelly murdered by a man.
The evident motive of the deed was robbery, and that the crime was planned
and premeditated there was sufficient evidence. Every clew and circumstance
pointed to Franz Holz. He was known to have been at or near the scene of the
murder shortly before its commission. He knew the woman, and had knowledge
that she kept a considerable sum of money in her home. He was known to
have been without money for days prior to the murder, and
immediately after the deed, and before the body was discovered, he had
appeared with a quantity of money, made some purchases, bought drinks
for acquaintances, and then disappeared.
The police were on his trail
within a short time after the finding of the body of the murdered woman. Holz
had fled toward Berlin, and a warning was sent in all directions, containing
descriptions of the fugitive.
The awfulness of the deed attracted the
more attention because of the locality and the ruthless and cruel manner of
its commission. While the police were making a rapid search for the fugitive
Holz, Hugo Devel, a well-to-do tradesman in Lubeck, surrendered himself
to the police of his home town and confessed that he, and not Holz,
had committed the crime. Devel had been in Hamburg at the time the
crime was committed. His confession, which destroyed all the evidence
and all the theories implicating Holz, staggered the
detectives.
DEVEL CONFESSES TO THE CRIME.
Although apparently
saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial evidence, and no longer
wanted for the murder of the Gimble woman, the German police reasoned that
Holz, if he had not fled because of that crime, must have fled because of
some other crime. So the department, which has a name a couple of feet long,
which in English would mean, "the department for finding out everything
about everybody," kept on the trail.
Meantime the police of Hamburg
got possession of Devel and examined him. From the first they were uneasy. He
confessed that he murdered the woman to get her money, and beyond that would
not tell anything. It is not customary for the police to insist that a man
who confesses that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were
facts known to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for
Devel to have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and
made the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became
to the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed
vehemently that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.
POLICE
LEARN HE IS NOT GUILTY.
Some of his statements were ridiculous. For
instance, he did not know what quarter of the city the woman lived in. He did
not know how she had been murdered. He said he climbed through a window and
killed the woman. When pressed, he said the window was the dining-room
window. In view of the fact that she was killed while working in a
little open, outdoor kitchen when murdered, the police became satisfied
that Devel was not the man, and ordered the pursuit of Holz resumed by
all departments.
The case even then was a remarkable one, and one
which would have defied any theoretical detective. The police proved that it
was impossible that Devel should be confessing in order to
shield Holz--first, because he never knew Holz; and second, because
the police had informed him that the real murderer was in custody,
in order to discover a reason for his confession. It was suspected
that Devel was partly insane and seeking notoriety. Everything in his
life refuted that idea. He was a quiet, orderly citizen, who seldom
read newspapers, and who neither was interested in crime or criminals. He
owned a small business in Lubeck, attended to it strictly, drank little, and
apparently was as sane as any one.
SEARCHING FOR MOTIVE OF
CONFESSION.
The case worried the police officials. The absolute lack of
reason for Devel's confession stimulated their curiosity. He was held in
custody for weeks, and then the police gave up in despair, and, as Holz
had been arrested and had confessed to everything, the release of
Devel was ordered. The order of release proved the move that revealed
the truth. When he was told that he was free to return home, Devel
broke down and begged the police to keep him in prison, to hang him,
to poison him, but not to send him home.
In his agony he confessed
that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get
hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife.
The
hard-hearted police set him free--literally threw him out of the prison, and
he returned to his wife in Lubeck. The following day he resumed charge of his
business.
An English correspondent visited Devel in his shop and made
certain inquiries of him regarding the case. As the hanging editor would
say, "the condemned man was nervous." He was afraid his wife would
read what he said, but the correspondent finally got him to tell.
"I
desired to be hung," said Devel, mournfully. "Life is not worth the living,
and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man
would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I
planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to
kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with
my wife."
Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief
grievances against married life in general, and his wife in
particular:
She was slender, and became fat and strong.
She was beautiful, and became ugly and coarse.
She was tender, and
grew hard.
She was loving, and grew virulent.
She grew
whiskers on her chin.
She called him "pig."
She wore
untidy clothes, and her hair was unkempt.
She refused to give him
beer.
Her breath smelled of onions and of garlic.
She
threw hot soup upon him.
She continually upbraided him because there
were no children.
She scolded him in the presence of
neighbors.
She refused to permit him to bring his friends
home.
She came into his store and scolded him.
She
accused him of infidelity.
She disturbed him when he slept in the
garden on Sundays.
She made him cook his own dinners.
She spilled his beer when he drank quietly with friends.
She told
tales about him among the neighbors, and injured his
business.
She served his sausages and his soup cold, and
sometimes did not have his meals for him when he came home.
She did not make the beds nor clean the house.
She took cards out of
his skat deck.
She talked continually, and scolded him for
everything or nothing.
She opened the windows when he closed
them, and closed them when he opened them.
She poured water
into his shoes while he slept.
She cut off his dachshund's
tail.
These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with
her.
Incidentally Holz, who is awaiting execution, expresses an
earnest desire to trade places with Herr Devel.
There is no accounting
for tastes.
A CLEVER SHOPLIFTER.
DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE
FINDS A FAIR CRIMINAL.
While passing through the Fair, one of the
largest retail dry goods establishments in Chicago, Detective Wooldridge
noticed one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever operated in Chicago,
Bertha Lebecke, known as "Fainting Bertha."
She was standing in front
of the handkerchief counter, where her actions attracted Wooldridge's
attention, and he concluded to watch her. She called the girl's attention to
something on the shelf and as she turned to get it Bertha's hand reached out
and took a half dozen expensive lace handkerchiefs, which disappeared in the
folds of her skirt.
The act was performed so quickly and with such
cleverness that it would have gone unnoticed unless one were looking right at
her and saw her take the handkerchiefs.
From the handkerchief counter
she went to the drug department, where she secured several bottles of
perfume. As she was leaving this counter she met a Central detective who had
arrested her before for the same offense. He stopped a few yards from her to
make some trifling purchases. She, thinking he was watching her, left the
store.
From the Fair she went to Siegel-Cooper's, another large dry
goods store several blocks away. Detective Wooldridge followed her. She
was seen to go from counter to counter, and from each one she succeeded
in getting some article.
As she was leaving the store she was placed
under arrest by Detective Wooldridge and taken to the Police
Station.
When she was arrested she fainted, and a great crowd gathered
around her, and many of the women cried and implored Detective Wooldridge
not to arrest her, but he would not be moved by any of them to let her
go free.
[Illustration: "_FAINTING BERTHA_"]
When she arrived
at the Police Station she was searched, and beneath the folds of her skirt
was found a strong waist pocket which looked like a petticoat. It consisted
of two pieces of material gathered full at the top with a strong cord or
puckering string run through, and sewed together around the edges. In front
of this great bag was a slit two feet long opening from the top to within a
few inches of the bottom. This petticoat was worn under the dress skirt. On
each side of the outside skirt was a long slit concealed by the folds of
the skirt, and with one hand she could slip the stolen articles in
through the slit in the inside of her dress and into the petticoat bag to
the opening in front. The capacity of the bag was enormous. She had
stolen some $40 or $50 worth of goods when arrested. The following
morning she was arraigned in the Police Court and heavily fined, and the
goods were restored to the merchants.
Bertha Lebecke, 27 years old, is
conceded by Illinois state authorities to be the most troublesome person who
ever crossed the state line from any direction at any time.
Just how
large a cash bonus the state treasury today might be willing to advance could
it be assured of Bertha's deportation forever beyond the confines of Illinois
is something difficult to estimate, but it is certain that in the asylums for
the insane at Kankakee, Elgin and Bartonville, and in the state penitentiary
at Joliet there are attendants on salaries who would make personal
contributions to help swell the possible fund.
Yet "Fainting Bertha"
Lebecke is one of the prettiest, blondest, most delicate handed little bits
of well-developed femininity that ever made a marked success in deceiving
people of both sexes and all conditions in public, afterwards deceiving
officials of jails, asylums and penitentiaries until bars and gates and
frowning walls were as cobwebs before her.
SLEEPS ALL DAY; MAKES
NIGHT HIDEOUS.
Gates of steel never have held her in jail or asylum. In
the mightier penitentiaries she has made herself such an uncontrolled
fury by night--sleeping calmly all day long and resting for the
next seance--that penitentiary gates have opened for her in the hope
of having her maintained as an asylum ward. After which "Fainting
Bertha" has secured keys to asylum doors and gone her untrammeled way
straight back to a police record which for years has shown her to be one of
the most remarkable pickpockets, diamond snatchers and shoplifters of
her time.
Making such a nuisance of herself in the penitentiary as no
longer to be tolerated in a refined convict community, she proves her
madness. In the locked, barred, asylum she proves her cunning at escape.
And, once more at liberty, the abandon with which she goes after
personal property in any form, at any time and under any circumstances,
proves her skill as a thief and her unbalance in the "get away."
There
is her escape from the asylum at Elgin on the night of December 25, 1904.
Christmas eve she had fainted in the arms of an attendant and in the
scurrying which followed had secured the keys to the gates. On the night of
Christmas she went out of the Elgin asylum, boarded an electric car for
Aurora and bought a railroad ticket to Peoria.
STOLE $1,000 WORTH OF
GOODS IN TWO DAYS.
On the way to Peoria she relieved the conductor of $30
in bills, secreting them in her hat. In Peoria, within forty-eight hours,
she had stolen a thousand dollars' worth of goods from stores,
registered at three hotels under assumed names, and was in a chair car with
a ticket for Omaha when the Peoria police had followed her easy
tracks through the city. Perhaps the broadest, most easily identified
track was that which she left in a barber shop in the National Hotel,
where she appeared for an egg shampoo. Two eggs had been broken into
her shiny hair when Bertha promptly fainted and rolled out of the
chair. As a count of shop equipment showed nothing missing an hour later,
the barber shop proprietor was at a loss as to the purpose of the
faint.
This girlish young woman, with the baby dimples and skin of peach
and cream, the innocent blue eyes, and the smiles that play so easily
over her face as she talks vivaciously and with keen sense of both wit
and humor, is a study for the psychologist. There is no affectedness
of speech--for the moment it is childishly genuine. She could sit in
a drawing room and have half a dozen admirers in her train.
But reform
schools, asylums and penitentiaries are institutions through which this young
woman has graduated up to that pinnacle of notorious accomplishment which
today is centering upon "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke the official attentions of
a great state. What to do with her is the question.
KEPT AT SOUTH
BARTONVILLE WITHOUT LOCKS.
Dr. George A. Zeller, superintendent of the
asylum for the incurable insane at South Bartonville, having fought for the
care of Bertha in his institution, purposes to make her a tractable patient
and willing to remain. He has the history of his institution back of him,
from whose doors and windows he has torn away $6,000 worth of steel
netting and steel bars.
In the first place, "Fainting Bertha" will
have nothing to gain by fainting at Bartonville; she is promised merely a
drowning dash of cold water when she falls. She can secure no keys by
fainting, for the reason that there are no keys to doors. A nurse, wideawake
for her eight-hour nursing duty, is always at hand and always
watchful.
"Take away the show of restraint if you would have a patient
cease fighting against restraint," is the philosophy of Dr. Zeller.
"Human vigilance always was and always will be the greatest safeguard for
the insane."
If "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke were a grizzled amazon,
even, she might be a simpler proposition for the state. She is too pretty and
plump, however, to think of restraining by the harsher methods, if
harsh methods are employed. She can pass out of a storm of hysterical
tears in an instant and smile through them like a stream of sunshine.
Or as quickly she can throw off the pretty little witticism and
airy conceit of her baby hands and become a vixen fury with blazing
blue eyes that are a warning to her antagonist.
And at large,
exercising her charms, she can become the "good fellow" to the everlasting
disappearance of half a dozen different valuables in one's tie or
pockets.
HISTORY OF "FAINTING BERTHA."
Bertha Lebecke says she
was born in Council Bluffs, Ia., in 1880. Save for the trick of raising her
brows while animated, thus wrinkling her forehead before her time, she might
pass easily for twenty-three years of age. In these twenty-seven years,
however, Bertha Lebecke has kept the institutions of four states guessing--to
some extent experimenting.
Her father was a cobbler, and there were five
children, only one other of them living. The father is dead. The mother, with
the one sister, is living in Council Bluffs. Seven asylums and one state's
prison have held her--for a time; Kankakee three times and Elgin twice,
with two escapes from each place credited to her childish cunning.
But today the face of Bertha Lebecke in trouble anywhere in
Christian civilization would draw helping funds for less than her
asking.
"Don't write that I am the awful creature that the papers
have pictured me," she exclaimed, with a tragic movement of her
little hands. "Oh, I have been a bad girl--I know that--but not as bad
as they accuse me of being," burying her face in her arm.
But in a
moment she was sitting up, dry eyed, stitching on the bit of linen "drawn
work" which she said was intended for Gov. Deneen
at Springfield.
CRITICISES THE LINEN PURCHASED BY THE
STATE.
"But what awful linen!" she exclaimed, holding it out to Dr.
Zeller as she sat in a ward with twenty other women inmates regarded as
among the hardest to watch and control among the 1,900 inmates of the
great institution. "I'm surprised at you! Can't you buy better linen
than that?"
But while she talked and the doctor smiled, a small key
fitting nothing in particular was laid by Dr. Zeller close at hand and
it disappeared in ten seconds. Likewise a pencil from the doctor's
pocket found its way almost unnoticed into "Fainting Bertha's" blonde
hair. Her smiling face all turned to frowns when finally, one at a time,
he took the key from her waist and the pencil from its hiding place in her
hair.
"Did you ever know a man named Gunther?" asked Dr. Zeller
suddenly.
"Yes--what of it?" she asked quickly, with a show of
nervousness.
"He is in the penitentiary."
"Good! Good!" exclaimed
the girl. "I'm delighted to hear it. He ought to have been there long ago,
and he ought to stay there the rest of his life!"
This was the man
whom Bertha charged with responsibility for her first wrong step as a girl,
sending her first to the Glenwood (Ia.) Home for the Feebleminded. Later she
charges that this man taught her the fainting trick, by which she faints in
the arms of a man or woman wearing jewelry or carrying money and in the
confusion biting the stone from a pin and swallowing it, or with small,
supple hand taking a purse from a pocket or a watch from its fob, perhaps
with innocent eyes and dimpled face assisting the loser in the search
for the missing valuable.
BERTHA SAYS GUNTHER PROMISED TO MARRY
HER.
"That man Gunther promised to marry me," she said, lowering her
voice. "He sent me out to steal and when I wouldn't do it he used to beat
me when I came home. Do you wonder I'm what I am?"
There was a burst
of what might have been tears. Her face was buried and her figure shook with
sobs. But in five seconds the dimpled face appeared again, dry eyed, and at a
remark on the moment she turned toward her auditors, winking an eyelid
slyly.
"Fainting Bertha" Lebecke has almost lost consecutive track of
the asylums and prisons in which she has been locked.
From this
Glenwood home for the feebleminded she was released. She got into trouble
again and was sent to the Clarinda State Hospital for the Insane. Here, in
the words of the superintendent, she was looked upon as a case of "moral
imbecility, with some maniacal complications." Here an operation was
performed, and, in the opinion of the superintendent, she was eligible to
discharge soon afterwards as improved.
St. Bernard's Asylum at Council
Bluffs cared for her for a time, but she succeeded in escaping from it and
was not returned.
In Asylum No. 3 at Nevada, Mo., in spite of the close
watch kept upon her, "Fainting Bertha" escaped several times, but was caught
soon after and returned to the institution. On December 21, 1901, she
was discharged as not insane and returned to Omaha, where she had
lived for a time. Here Bertha remained about two years, acting as a
maid of all work in households. Her experience in Chicago and Illinois
is stranger than any fiction.
MOST UNRULY PRISONER IN
JOLIET.
On a charge of shoplifting she was given an indeterminate
sentence of one to ten years in the penitentiary at Joliet.
Records of
Joliet prison show her to have been the most unruly prisoner ever confined in
that institution. Her conduct was such that Prison Physician Fletcher
declared that she was insane and she was sent to the asylum at
Kankakee.
Twice she escaped from Kankakee, once, she says, with the aid
of an employee of the institution, whom she refuses to name. This
first escape was made within four months of her arrival at the
institution; the second after a year. On her return to that institution
for criminals her actions were such that the hospital authorities
decided that she was not insane and sent her back to Joliet prison.
On
this second imprisonment "Fainting Bertha" showed what she could do in making
herself impossible even in a prison. Her cell was in the north wing of the
building, overlooking the street. She would appear in the window with her
clothing torn to ribbons, shrieking that she was being murdered. According to
prison officials, there was no language too impossible for her glib tongue.
Her furies of temper caused her to heap unspeakable abuse upon matrons and
guards alike. Deputy Warden Sims, responsible for order and discipline, says
he has been abused by her beyond belief. Her plan was to sleep in
daylight and make the whole night hideous with her screams and cries
and unspeakable language.
PENITENTIARY GLAD TO BE RID OF
HER.
As a last resort the tortured prison officials at Joliet,
taking the diagnosis of Physician Fletcher, sent her to the care of
Supt. Podstata at the Elgin asylum. There, after consultation of the
asylum physicians, it was found that she should have been confined in
an asylum for the feebleminded when she was younger; that, lacking
this treatment, she had grown and developed such destructive
tendencies that a hospital for the insane was the only haven for
her.
But Bertha escaped from the asylum, which has for its
safeguards the lock and the steel bar. Locks and bars are nothing to
"Fainting Bertha"! She was recaptured and returned, only that she might
escape again on Christmas night, finding her way to Peoria, where
her escapades in going through the town were marvels to the Peoria
police. The conductor on the Peoria train from whom she took $30 has
not claimed his money. But half a dozen stores in which she operated
and the salesman from whose samples in the Fey Hotel she took hundreds
of dollars worth of silks, jewelry, clothing and perfumes got back some of
the plunder, which detectives found piled around her in a chair car in an
Omaha train.
The Peoria police locked her up, and while the charges
rested Dr. Zeller, of the asylum for the incurable insane at South
Bartonville, asked of Dr. Podstata and the penitentiary authorities the
custody of "Fainting Bertha." Warden Murphy at Joliet was delighted at
the idea. Supt. Podstata at Elgin was as greatly pleased. Dr. Zeller
at South Bartonville Asylum for the Incurable Insane, receiving the
young woman, was conscious of having a unique addition to the 1,929
other inmates of his barless cottages of detention. In the history of
the South Bartonville asylum only one female inmate has escaped, and
she was found dead soon afterwards in a ravine into which she had fallen. |
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