Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — An Almost Incredible Story. [ARTICLE]

An Almost Incredible Story.

The following heartrending particulars of the treatment received by two helpless children at the hands of a woman, the wife of a painter, in whose care the children had been placed, is presented by the Lancaster (Pa.) InMUyenoer. Persons who were eye and ear witnesses, and who lived upon the spot, received the information from the lips of one of the children : “ The children were confined for more than a year, for the most part in a cellar, where hogs were kept, and employed there in doing work for their master; their only food was a piece of bread a day, without even water to drink, they supplying that fflvant from the hog’s trough. They had not lain in a bed during the ivhole time. Their mistress, who practiced nursing, used frequently, without any cause, to tie them up by the hands, stretched out, to a staple fixed in the ceiling, after stripping them stark naked, and?whip them till her strength was exhausted, and they were covered with wounds; after which she fastened their bodices upon them, which, cleaving to their lacerated flesh, eat into their bodies till the human tigress renewed her cruelties, which we may naturallj’ suppose were every time more intolerable than the preceding. The eldest, who is seventeen years of age, she scourged no less thau six times the Friday before the disedvery, whereby, and by her former usage, she was one continued sore, covered with gashes from head to feet; her flesh seemed putrifled, and she appeared rather as if cut with knifes than whips ; her head was swelled to an enormous size, her eyes imperceptible and her speech gone. An iron collar that was put about her neck had torn that and her shoulders in a terrible manner. The youngest, who is thirteen years old, is likewise a miserable spectacle. She declared, to an acquaintance of tlie writer of this that sometimes after they had been whipped, the blood which streamed from the!r wotinds formed puddles underneath them where they sat in the cellar. The man is said not to have whipped them, but was only accessory as knowing and permitting ir. When the mistress went away she caused them to be chained up in that filthy place till her return, which they (dreaded more than death, which would haveput a period to their sufferings. The eldest son is said to have assisted the mother in whipping and insulting them.”