The Herriges Horror in Philadelphia Part 3

"Ah, I see you have put a bed in here. There was none when John was taken out."

"Oh, yes it was," said the woman quickly. "The bed was always here, but we have put a spread over it. We did not do any thing else."

"Yes you have done something else," was the rejoinder. "You sc.r.a.ped away several inches of filth off this floor, and whitewashed and scrubbed it, it is all wet yet."

"Oh well," said she, "the poor old woman down there was not able to keep him clean at all. She is eighty years old and the most devoted loving mother possible, feeding him with her own hands and providing for him every delicacy, like strawberries and such things as that."

"Well, now what was the reason you had John confined here?"

"John studied too hard when he tried to get into the High School and turned his brain. When he was first wrong his brother Joseph, who is the kindest hearted man alive, had him taken to a public inst.i.tution; but his mother got uneasy about him and he was brought home again; and Dr. G.o.ddard was called in to attend him. The doctor said he needed nothing but kindness and skillful nursing, which they gave him with an affection beautiful to behold."

In reply to an inquiry of how long the poor fellow had been locked up in this room, she said:

"He wasn't locked up here at all. He had the range of the whole house."

"How long has he been out of his mind?" asked a gentleman.

"Somewhere about eighteen years."

"Are you a relation of his?"

"Oh, no, I am only a neighbor, and came in to stay with his poor old mother, who is nearly scared to death."

"Has he any relatives except his mother and brother?"

"Yes, he has four sisters."

About this time Joseph Herriges, nearly dead with fright, returned with the police force, and expressed great gratification at the presence of the reporters, in order that they might tell his part of the story, and thus have _reliable_ facts to give to the public instead of a pack of lies told by the neighbors. He said:

"John, when a boy, was very intellectual, and I had resolved to give him a good education, so I got him into the public school, also into a night school, and had him taught penmans.h.i.+p as well as cigar-making.

"Once when he attended a lecture he fell as he came down stairs, and struck his head such a violent blow that he never was the same boy afterwards, but gradually lost his mind. That has been about twelve years ago."

It will be noticed here that the woman had previously stated eighteen years. This was the first discrepancy. Herriges continued:

"I took him to the almshouse, where he was under Dr. Robert Smith's care for a month. Then his mother and his sister _here_ visited every day."

[Here Herriges pointed to the woman who had positively said she was only a _neighbor_.] "At last, to please mother, I brought him home and called in Doctor Gardner, who said, after a long attendance, that he could do him no good. I have devoted my life to that boy, and washed him every day, and attended to his wants whenever I attended to my own, and combed and fed him."

"Then how is it that his hair and beard have become just like felted cloth with filth, and how is it that he is covered from head to foot with vermin?"

"What! how!" exclaimed Herriges with a decidedly mixed expression on his countenance. "Was there vermin? Well I don't know how he got them. I never saw any that's certain."

"Was he so very violent that you kept him locked up in this cage?"

"Oh, no, John was always as gentle as a lamb."

"Then what are those iron and wooden slats at that window for?"

"Oh, well, we were afraid that he might take a fit some time and get into the street and say strange things."

At this juncture of the garbled narrative, Herriges became flurred, and begged the reporters to do him justice, repeating the words.

"Now you will do me justice, won't you? You see they say I have kept him imprisoned in this way to get his share of the property. He has not got a cent in the world, for this house is only the property of mother during her life time. It is all she has and when she dies it will have to be divided among the whole six of us."

"But look here," interrupted a gentlemen of the party, "what about those houses on Lombard street and the houses on Fourth street?"

"Oh, those are all my own," answered he. "I worked and earned them myself."

The questioner replied.

"But you told me this morning that your father died in Oregon and left all his property to you alone. How do you make that agree with this last statement?"

"Don't interrupt me. You confuse me, and put me out. I am trying to tell a straight story and you throw me out. I'll tell you again exactly all."

He then repeated his former statement and wound up with a fresh appeal to be done justly by; which seemed in his mind to mean that his statement alone should be given to the public. But he was told that Mrs. Gibson's story would be published as well as his own, whereupon another sister, who had just arrived on the scene, p.r.o.nounced Mrs. Gibson a liar, and added her solicitations to have that part of the history suspended.

On a subsequent visit, the sister who had represented herself as only a neighbor, repeated the statements that been previously made by her and her brother with a few more variations and contradictions. For instance she remarked that the papers said John was a boy of eight years old when he was first put in the cage, or little room, "Now that is false, for he was between twenty-three and twenty-four when he went insane." On the previous day she had said that he went crazy when he was trying to get into the High School.

TRYING TO GET GIBSON AWAY.

On June 16th, Alderman Kerr gave one of the sisters, Mary Ann Hurtt, who resides at 707 Girard Avenue, a hearing on the charge of tampering with the witness, Mrs. Gibson's son.

Mr. Thomas J. Gibson, Jr., residing at 337 Lombard Street, testified that Mrs. Hurtt came to his house and asked him whether he could not drop that case and get out of the way, so as not to testify, saying that if he would she would pay him back all the rent he had paid her for the place he was occupying, and would make him a handsome present besides that.

The whole statement was most vehemently denied by the accused, who, however, was held in five hundred dollars bail to answer the charge at court. Her brother Joseph entered the required security.

THE VICTIM REMOVED TO THE ALMSHOUSE.

As soon as Alderman Kerr made the requisite order to that effect, the poor imbecile who had been shut up in his cage for so long a time was placed in a carriage and taken promptly to Blockley Almshouse.

The attendants and officials who received him aver that in all their experience they have never seen such a heart-rending sight as was John Herriges when brought to the inst.i.tution. And this, it will be recollected, was after the poor wretch had been submitted to the partial cleansing that his relatives gave him immediately after the visit paid them by Mrs. Gibson in relation to the captive.

At once, upon his arrival at the hospital of the almshouse, he was stripped of the slight filthy salt-bag petticoat, and his body submitted to a thorough but careful scrubbing, after which the flesh was, with equal care, rubbed until the natural color of the skin began to make its appearance through the deep stain of acc.u.mulated filth of so many years.

Next his hair was clipped short, after which fully half an inch of solid filth and dirt, as hard and tough as leather, was sc.r.a.ped away from his scalp. After all this was done, which occupied a long time, he was dressed in a clean suit of the material used for the clothing of the inmates and placed in a cell, in which, also, he was securely locked at night, to prevent him harming either himself or others. But this was ascertained to be entirely unnecessary, as the poor fellow was as docile and quiet as a lamb.

After his face was cleaned off, the peculiar pallor of his countenance, resulting from the great length of time he was imprisoned in his noisome cell, was almost unearthly and strangely striking.

The muscles of his body were like so many flabby strings, from being never brought into exercise, rendering him very feeble, though naturally, to judge from the size of his frame, he would be a man of great physical strength.

At first, after his release, his favorite position was a kind of sitting squatting posture, with the hands resting upon the knees, the back bent, and head hanging down.

If ordered to get up, he would do so promptly, but rather slowly, as he was obliged to remove his hands from his knees and place them on the back of his hips. He would get up and stand like a bent over statue.

"Now then, John, walk along."

At this order he would shuffle forward for a step or two, or about the length of the cage in which he had been confined, and then manifest a desire to turn round and shuffle back, like a sentry walking his beat.