Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the WorldWooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
History
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Wooldridge, Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman)
Crime -- Illinois -- Chicago; Police -- Illinois -- Chicago
"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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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