Category Archives: Children

1794: Two sweeps, aged 8 or less, die in the same chimney

Histories of Victorian Britain are filled with tragic stories of young chimney sweeps. Recruited at age four or five and apprenticed to so-called ‘master sweeps’, these young boys endured long hours, horrendous treatment and atrocious working conditions.

Chimney sweeps usually worked in the pre-dawn hours, after flues had cooled and before morning fires were lit. With hands and knees they were forced to shimmy up dark narrow flue spaces, packed thick with soot and debris. Regular inhalation of this soot caused many young sweeps to contract respiratory illnesses, such as tuberculosis.

Some young sweeps also acquired an aggressive form of testicular cancer, colloquially known as “soot wart” or “sooty balls”. Thomas Clarke, a Nottingham master sweep, told an 1863 inquiry:

“I have known eight or nine sweeps lose their lives by the sooty cancer. The private parts which it seizes are entirely eaten off, caused entirely by ‘sleeping black’ and breathing the soot in all night.”

Workplace accidents posed a more immediate danger for chimney sweeps. The English press of the late 18th and 19th century contained dozens of reports of the deaths of these ‘climbing boys’. Some fell from roofs or down chimney structures; others become lodged in flues and suffocated; a few were roasted alive after being forced up still-hot chimneys.

One of the more tragic incidents occurred in Lothbury, near the Bank of England, where two young sweeps were sent into a baker’s chimney, one from each end:

“The [first] boy reported that the chimney contained a great deal of rubbish… not answering his master’s call, suspicion arose that he was either sulky or in a dangerous predicament. A stone in the cellar was accordingly taken up and the boy [was] found dead. The master called to the [second] boy who answered him by saying that he was so jammed in that if immediate relief was not given he should die, and this unfortunately was the case… The whole of this happened in ten minutes… Both the lads were very young and small, the oldest not more than eight years.”

Source: The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 95, 1804. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1922: “Women’s colleges ought to be burned”, says See

a b see — Like those who rode his elevators, A. B. See knew how to push buttons

Alonzo Bertram See (1848-1941) was a prominent elevator manufacturer from New York City. Born in Yonkers, See started his own company in 1883 and began to ride the skyscraper boom to success and wealth. By the turn of the century, See was a millionaire several times over and his business – the quirkily named A. B. See Elevator Company – was the third largest manufacturer and installer of elevators in the United States.

New Yorkers rode in See’s elevators, and thus were familiar with his name, but knew little of him until the 1920s. In 1922, Adelphi College, a Brooklyn women’s college, started a fundraising drive and wrote to See seeking donations. He responded in the negative, explaining his views bluntly:

“Of all the fool things in the world, I think colleges for women are the worst… College girls are slangy, they swagger, smoke cigarettes, have bold and brazen manners, paint and powder their faces, use lipsticks, wear high heeled shoes and dress indecently… When they graduate from college they cannot write a legible hand; they know nothing about the English language; they cannot spell… All women’s colleges ought to be burned.”

See’s letter found its way into the hands of the press. Coming shortly after the passing of the 19th amendment, guaranteeing voting rights for women, See’s views unleashed a flood of protest from women’s rights campaigners. As the New York Times put it, many women “hit the ceiling faster than they ever ascended in one of See’s elevators”. See, however, remained steadfast. When a prominent suffragette challenged him to a debate, See publicly declined, saying that:

“I never discuss anything logical with women. They can talk straight for about five minutes and then they go off the handle. They haven’t got the reasoning power a man has, and I wouldn’t think of debating with any woman on any subject.”

Apparently enjoying the notoriety, Alonzo See became something of a social critic. His two favourite targets were women and education, both of which he seemed to regard as a waste of time.

When reformers sought legislation to outlaw child labour in 1924, See wrote agitated letters to the press, claiming that it was physically harmful to keep 13-year-old boys in school. Two years later, he penned a lengthy essay on education, arguing that school causes some children to go blind and others to physically “waste away”. “Children must be rescued from their mothers and from pedagogues,” See wrote, and “women must be rescued from themselves”.

The New York press published smirking references to See’s sexism for many years. In 1936, however, it was revealed that A. B. See had undergone an epiphany with regard to women and had “changed his mind on them altogether”.

Source: Various inc. New York Tribune, November 24th 1922. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1914: Girl, 12, arrested for attempting suicide

In November 1914, a New York newspaper announced the sad tale of May Gallick from the Bronx. May, aged 12, was under arrest in hospital after attempting suicide. What drove her to this desperate act? Teasing from her four-year-old brother:

Source: The Evening World (New York City), November 30th 1914. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1904: Mrs Lasher goes down for passive smoking

1904: Mrs Lasher of Binghamton will spend 30 days in jail – for “smoking cigarettes in the presence of her children”.

Source: Rock Island Argus, November 5th 1904. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1909: Missing Texas boy turns up in cotton bale in England

In December 1908, a Texas cotton farmer, George Hartman, reported his two-year-old son Alfred missing. Young Alfred had accompanied his father on a delivery run to Fredericksburg but went missing while Hartman Snr. was conducting business.

An extensive search of the town failed to turn up any sign of Alfred. It was presumed he had wandered into a local waterway, drowned and sank to the bottom. The mystery was solved six months later, with:

“…the finding of the dead body of the infant in a bale of cotton opened in Liverpool, England… The child having crept into the press while open and, falling asleep, was ginned into the bale of cotton. The cotton was sold to a Texas concern, placed in a warehouse for several weeks and finally exported to Liverpool.”

Source: The Gettysburg Times, May 10th 1909. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1878: Studying when pregnant leads to big-headed children

Maternal impression – a belief that a mother’s actions and experiences during pregnancy will shape the physiology and character of her child – was a medieval idea that held sway until the late 19th century.

One physician who perpetuated it was Dr Walter Y. Cowl, a New York obstetrician and homeopathist. Writing in 1878, Cowl repeated numerous anecdotal accounts of maternal impression. In Rome, “ugly boors and women with hideous features” give birth to “sons and daughters of surprising beauty” – because they spend their lives looking at “grand statues and paintings”. A Boston lawyer bore a striking resemblance to Napoleon Bonaparte because his parents, obsessed with the French leader, had Napoleon’s picture in their bedroom.

In a cautionary tale to mothers, Cowl cites a case, originally described by Hester Pendleton, of a woman who studied while pregnant:

“For some months previous to the birth of her fifth child [she] exercised her mental powers to their fullest extent. She attended lectures, both literary and scientific, and read much of such works as tended to strengthen the reason and judgement… Her labour, always before short and easy, was this time two days in duration and exceedingly painful, owing to a very large foetal head, with especial prominence of the forehead. The child, a son, now grown, bids fair to outstrip in ability all her other children.”

Source: Walter Y. Cowl MD, “Similia Similibus Generantur” in The North American Journal of Homeopathy, vol.26, 1878. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1517: Frog-squeezing copulation leads to frog-faced child

Ambroise Pare was arguably the most famous barber-surgeon of the 16th century. Pare served as a medical advisor to several French kings and once saved the life of a military officer who had been run through 12 times with a sword.

In Pare’s Oeuvres, a collection of surgical memoirs written near the end of his life, he recalled a strange case from the early 1600s. According to Pare, a woman near Blois had delivered a baby with the “face of a frog”. In 1517, the family was visited by a military surgeon, who examined the child and asked how it came to be deformed. According to the child’s father:

“…his wife had a fever… in order to cure it, one of her neighbours advised her to take a live frog in her hand and hold it until it died. That night she went to bed with her husband, still holding the frog in her hand… They copulated and she conceived, and through the influence of her imagination [she now] has this monster that you have seen.”

Pare’s writings contain another incident involving frogs. In 1551, Pare was consulted by a mentally disturbed man who was convinced his insides were inhabited by frogs which were “leaping about” in his stomach and intestines. Pare issued the patient with a strong laxative, resulting in “urgent emissions” from his bowels – and then secretly slipped some small live frogs “into his close stool”. The patient, apparently satisfied that the frogs were discharged, left feeling much better.

Source: Ambroise Pare, Les Oeuvres d’Ambroise Pare, 1664 edition. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1720: Autopsy finds 46-year-old petrified foetus

An anatomical diagram of the fractured mass found inside Anna Mullern in 1720

Anna Mullern was born in Swabia in 1626 and married late, probably in her 30s. Anna and her husband wanted children but for many years were unable to conceive. In 1674, when Anna was 48, she “declared herself to be with child”, having shown “all the usual tokens of pregnancy”. Anna experienced some swelling but when symptoms abated after a few weeks, her doctor declared this ‘pregnancy’ a false alarm.

All that was quickly forgotten when Anna conceived and delivered two healthy children, a son and a daughter. Her husband died soon after but Anna remained in excellent health, bringing up her children alone and living to the ripe old age of 94.

In March 1720, as Anna lay dying, she made an unusual request of her physician, Dr Wohnliche. Convinced that she had conceived a child in 1674, and that it remained trapped inside her, Anna requested her body be “cut open” after death. A Dr Steigertahl performed the requested autopsy – and quickly located the petrified body of Anna’s stillborn child from 46 years before:

“Her body was opened by the surgeon… he found within her a hard mass of the form and size of a large ninepin bowl, but had not the precaution to observe whether it lay in the uterus or without it… For want of a better instrument [he] broke it open with the blow of a hatchet. This ball, with the contents of it, are expressed in the following figures [see image, right].”

Source: Dr Steigertahl, “An Account of a Foetus that continued 46 years in the mother’s body” in Philosophical Transactions, vol. 31, 1721. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1860: Woman charged with ant infanticide

In January 1860, Sarah Sadler of Wollongong, Australia was arrested and charged with infanticide – or, more aptly, infanticide by ant.

According to the police brief, witnesses observed Sadler entering a paddock on the morning of January 18th and leaving it that afternoon, reportedly in a weak and distressed state. This information was communicated to the local constable, who the following day carried out an inspection of the paddock.

In the field he found a newborn baby, naked on the ground under a tree and atop a nest of large ants. The child, whose gender was not recorded, was unconscious and covered “head to toe” with ants. It briefly regained consciousness while being bathed but expired later that afternoon:

“We had an opportunity of examining the body of the deceased infant and it presented one of the most affecting spectacles we ever beheld. It had every appearance of being not only a healthy but an extraordinarily strong child, perfect in symmetry and strong of limb. The whole side of its right thigh and foreleg, the foreleg of the left leg, its right side, its face and forehead and the right ear were perforated with holes eaten by the ants.”

A doctor examined Sadler and her home and testified that a birth had likely taken place. Another witness swore he saw the defendant acting “like a madwoman” on the date in question. The trial judge instructed jury members to return a guilty verdict only if they could be certain of the defendant’s sanity.

Unable to do so, the jury found her not guilty of murder. Sadler’s subsequent fate is not recorded.

Sources: Illawarra Mercury (Wollongong) February 17th 1860; North Wales Chronicle, April 21st 1860. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.

1744: Boy, 3, drinks ale, lifts cheese, has pubic hair

In 1747, the noted physician and obstetrician Thomas Dawkes reported a rare case of advanced ageing in Cambridgeshire. The subject, Thomas Hall, was born in Willingham in October 1741. At nine months of age Thomas was already beginning to show signs of puberty. Dawkes first examined Thomas in 1744, a few weeks before his third birthday, and found that he had pubic hair:

“…as long, as thick and as crisp as that of an adult person. The glans of his penis was quite uncovered [and] he could throw, with much facility, a hammer of 17 pounds weight… He had as much understanding as a boy of five or six.”

By Thomas’ third birthday he stood almost four feet in height. According to Dawkes, he could lift a large Cheshire cheese and balance it on his head, and drink a two-gallon cask of ale without difficulty. By the age of four, Thomas walked and talked like an adult. He had also started to grow a beard.

Sensing an opportunity for profit, Thomas’ father turned him into a public spectacle. The boy spent more than a year ‘performing’ in local taverns, where “he was often debauched with wines and other inebriating liquors”.

Dawkes examined Thomas again just after his fifth birthday. At this point he stood four feet six inches tall, weighed 85 pounds and had a penis six inches long and three inches in circumference. But Thomas’ rapid growth was also taking a toll on his health, which deteriorated rapidly through 1747. Dawkes visited Thomas in late August, a week before his death, and found him:

“…a piteous and shocking spectacle [with] several bald spaces in his head, and his visage and gesture gave the lively idea of a decrepit old man, worn out with age.”

Thomas Hall died in September 1747, shortly before his sixth birthday. He was buried in the churchyard at Willingham. On the evidence, it appears that Thomas suffered from progeria or a similar genetic disorder.

Source: Thomas Dawkes, Prodigium Willinghamense, 1747; The Scots Magazine, vol. 10, 1747. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.