Rensselaer Republican, Volume 13, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1881 — Her Feet Go Down to Death. [ARTICLE]

Her Feet Go Down to Death.

Springfield Republican. Forty-eight hours from the time Jennie Cramer walked under the Temple street elms in New Haven, the prettiest girl in the city, her dotted white muslin fresh and starched, and her whole figure trim, trigaud breezy, from her white straw hat and Its ‘brown feather to the little clinking brass plates on the heels of her shoes, her body was lying face downward iu a slimy pool on the edge of New Haven harbor, the tide rocking the motionless body back and forth, and ac every motion wiuding her draggled skirts tighter, about her round, full figure. How she came there inquest, indictment and trial have yet to decide, but her death has writteu her last week’s history at large, and the path by which the young woman went to her fate is familiar enough to any one who watches the young girls who swarm on the streets of a Saturday night, pretty, bright and loud voiced, skating ou thin ice over depths of which they have the barest knowledge and that little delusive. , Jennie Cramer was not a bad girl as girlsjgo who have stepped over the line which keeps a girl at her mother’s side and limits her acquaintances by her family’s, and the number of girls who do this is not large among those pretty enough to be admired and old enough to enjoy the freedom of an American girl, not hedged about by a card case, a visiting list aud formal introductions. The man with whom Jeunie was last seen, James Malley, a boyish-looking fellow, with a narrow,black moustache she met one night about a year ago on the college green. It was doubtless one of the chance introductions to be seen any evening-on Main street; but it was very far from being concealed from her parents, and when Malley wrote three weeks ago, asking Jennie to put ofl an out-of-town trip to drive with him, Mrs. Cramer, with a “very sorry” that he was “so disappointed,” wrote him that Jennie had already gone, but would be back “Thursday morning,” just a week before the Thursday morning the mother drove the daughter from the house for passing the night away from home in Malley’s company.

One week more brought Jennie to New Haven harbor. Three weeks ago the well-spelled, well-written notes ■which passed between her and young Malley point to formal relations, formal from a sidewalk flirtation, but Jennie ha-J already known for a week Blanch Douglas, a pale, delicate-look-ing girl, dressed well, but not overdressed, whom Walter Malley had brought up from New York city. She was a professional prostitute. This acquaintance began at night on the college green, ripened by sidewalk and suppers, brought Jennie for the last fortnight of her life to be one of four,of whom two were men rotten to the core and a third a woman fresh from a house of ill-fame. and she, the girl now dead, the ' fourth. For two weeks there were trips and excursions, restaurants suppers and rides,all bringing the end closer, and through it all Jennie seems to have been ignorant that her companion was not like herself, a wild girl,running heedless risks. A night came at la it, Wednesday August 3, which Jennie spent away from home with her companions. She may have wandered before, but if she had not the net in which the reckless young girl was caught with the other woman of this party of four schooled to vice,might well have swept a strong er nature away. Thursday morning she was driven from her home. Thursday evening shelwas again at*a supper and drank her snare of fo'ir bottles of wine, and then she disappears, to be found when the tide came in, Saturday morning. For awhile, there was more or less lying by the survivors: but the arrest of the young Malleys and the testimony of Blanche gives clews which connect Jennie to the last with her evil companions. Down to the last appalling catastrophe, this story might easily enough lie matched in any city and many a village. Night-idleness and petty dissipation work their sure result. Ignorance does much, but evil more, and no man or woman can play with the devil’s own Are and come 'off unscorcbed. There appears to be no doubt that, in this case, the parents permitted a risk for which they are blameable; but it is tolerably clear that this young girl wandered along a path in which she Jostled the bad and the vile U blank

ignorance of her- company. It takes experience, a cool head and a clear eye to see below the plausible surface in ■iiEwnDUTirEiij jf_t J iv ’1 "i i she had none of these. No girl has of the hundreds wM M “feUK nightly through dangers (for which they have neither been prepared not warned. HtJ is too late to put up the,banjn American life. For good or for evil,custom has established a free social intercourse. and the paths, by which a 'girl passes beyond home Influences are easy and all alike dangerous,but the risks are vastly increased by ignorance of the facts, and conditions which breed danger and bring disaster. A healthy home life is the soundest of all safeguards; but as long as village life has disappeared for good and all in our provincial cities, and all of them share the overflow of vipe from New York, girls like this one would fall less often if they were wisely taught more knowledge of the evil in the world. I It is not that they are ignorant of the real .relations of the sexes, for they are not ignorant of them, but mothers and daughters alikn too often act; as though they were ignorant of the very thin veneer which may disguise the rake in the gentleman, and of the passion which may transform the ordinarially well-intentioned man into the devil when 1 opportunity presents the 1 temptation. Man is a dangerous animal,not to be trifled with or yielded to, and giddy girls who rebel against the all too loose restraints of oyr American homes take perilous risks. The presumption is also pretty strong in'the New Haven case that the basest scoundrelism was at work at the bottom.