Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 April 1896 — MADE BLIND TO BEG! [ARTICLE]

MADE BLIND TO BEG!

Young Children in Chicago Who Are Cruelly Tortured. The police of Chicago have unearthed a system 6f child torture which is almost without parallel in the world’s history. One morning recently a police officer saw a woman of distressing appearance sitting on the sidewalk. With her were three children, two of them being blind. The eye 3 of the little ones were inflamed and red. The woman by signs was begging the people who passed to drop pennies in a little box which was in front of her. The women and children were taken to a police station. During the course of the day a stalwart ltalian walked in and asked for them. He was Achille Masselli,'the husband of the woman and the father of the children. He was at once placed under arrest, for physicians had declared that the eyes of the little ones had been made blind with something like pepper or gunpowder. Both the man and the woman denied that anything had been done to the eyes of the little ones, but declared that they were born blind. From the investigation which has followed this startling discovery has developed the fact, so the police say, that the practice of blinding the eyes of young children so that they will be more “useful” ini begging is regularly carried on in Chicago. The blindness thus caused is pot always permanent, but in the case of the two children of Masselli, at least, it is very doubtful if their eyesight will ever be recovered.