Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 144, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1903 — Mistreated Teacher Sues For $10,000 [ARTICLE]

Mistreated Teacher Sues For $10,000

'Sullivan, lad., Deo. 21.—A salt for SIO,OOO damages was filed today by Hays <& Hays and W. T. Donthitt, attorneys for Miss Erline Sinclair, the nineteen-y ear-old sobool teacher who was ducked in a pond by her pupils' on Deo. 8 The defendants, Floyd Dedkard, Inda Deckard, Pearl -Parks, Kath-. erine Paths, Gertrude MoOlellan and Jessie MoOlellan, have already made arrangements to defend the case and have retained Charles ©. Hunt as their attorney. The oomplaint, which is leDgthy resites «thestorv of the outiaae committed on Miss Sinclair. It tells of tUie defendants binding’her first to -a rail and 4hen, with her hand bound behind her back, tying her ia« sheep trough, using ropes three-eighths of-an inch thiok. In this oondition, after a hole had been out in the ice over the pond, she was thrust into the water up to her waist. This not being sufficiently .deep, the <oomplaint says, the end of the'trough was kuooked ontdn order>toallow the teacher to eink.deeper into the water. The water rose 'to the tteaobePs neck, and, aays the oomplaint, she oonld keep her head above water only by thrusting it back on the ioe. The oomplaint alleges that Miss Sinclair was in the water fifty minutes. The returns on tbeeummons are dated for rthe first day of the January term of the Circuit Court. The fathers of the children who are sued are small farmers and are not eatioaated to be worth collectively much in excess of the sum sued for.