Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1913 — FIGHTS AGAINST HER BABIES [ARTICLE]

FIGHTS AGAINST HER BABIES

Children, Two, Three and Four Years Old, Are Kept at Cradle Age by Mother.

Cleveland, Ohio. —In a little kitchen at her home, Mrs. Mood Thol has battled with nature for years secretly in an effort to keep time from touching her babies. Around her feet crept three children, two, three and four years old. Victims of a strange code her ingenuity devised to prevent them advancing beyond the cradle, they laughed, kicked their .feet and waved their handß as she crooned over them. The eldest boy did not creep faster or with greater ease than the younger oneß. He mumbled incoherently, and tugged at his mother's dreßS and Blobbered over a little bib, when she tickled him beneath the chin. He Is barely larger than a child of two years and apparently has not advanced intellectually beyond the cradle. To further defeat their development,' the mother has never fed them anything except baby food. What lay beyond the door, through which a stranger never passed, they had no idea. Neighbors say the woman never took her children away from home. Occasionally in the hot summer, they say. she would wheel therfi away in the darkness, but always guarding them closely from the gaze of any persons. •She has a strange desire to always keep them babies," Deputy Sheriff Sobczak said. “The four-year-old boy cannot talk or walk. He la not as large as an ordinary youngster of eighteen months old." Several days ago William James,

clerk of the probate court, discovered the plight of the children and Investigated. He continued the investigation until he made sure the children were not imbeciles. James and Sobczak went to the house, arrested the woman and took her to the City hospital. The children will be placed in r.n Infant institution.