Chapter VIII: Preface (8)

When she began to call on the "queen" the spectators began to get excited. Most of them appeared to be thoroughly familiar with the proceedings, and several of them said: "Oh, I hope it's the king."

Then the medium pulled a cord which was attached to a light enclosed in a sheet-iron case, the one small opening of which was covered with several thicknesses of green tissue paper. When she pulled the string the room became darker than ever.

SPIRITS BEGIN TO MOVE.

Before she began her incantations the medium had requested everyone present not to cross their feet, and to try to assist her to bring the spirits before them. She said that it would probably not be possible to bring a spirit for everybody, but that if all helped her, the spirits wanted by many in the audience would surely appear.

Then she asked them all to sing "Nearer, My God, to Thee," which they did, and after a few more passes over her temples and in front of her eyes the spirit began to move. The detectives could see it, and they began to think they had been wrong in thinking there was nothing in spiritualism. It certainly appeared real. First one form would glide back and forth in front of the curtain, then an entirely different one would appear. Altogether there were spirits of about ten men and children materialized.

As the apparitions moved slowly in front of the curtain, in the spectral light which made it impossible to detect more than a faint outline of the form, women rushed forward crying out that it was their husband, or their child, that they saw. They stretched out their hands to clasp the forms of their departed, but Jennie Nichols and her male assistant would take them by their hands and tell them they must not touch the spirit or it would fade away. You could get within six inches of the figures, and peer into the faces as they passed to and fro, but everyone was restrained from attempting to touch them. In the ghostly light of the room the closest inspection could not determine that the figures were frauds, so clever were they disguised.

KEYS UP THE SPECTATORS.

While the detectives were waiting for the materialization, a woman they knew entered the room. Barry put his handkerchief up to his face for fear she would recognize him. They wanted to know what was the matter with him, and Barry said that he guessed he had something in his eye. They wanted to take it out, and he had to put his handkerchief away. He thought he was discovered, but the woman, Mrs. Ella Hoobler, 319 West Madison street, said nothing about him. After they had arrested the Nichols woman, Mrs. Hoobler told Barry she had recognized him when she first entered the room, but she thought he was "bug" in the game, and said nothing.

After about ten materializations of husbands and children had keyed the spectators up to a high pitch, Mrs. Hoobler asked for the spirit of her daughter, Helen. In a few minutes the figure of a young girl, clad in white from head to foot, appeared before the curtain.

"Oh, Helen, my Helen!" Mrs. Hoobler exclaimed, rushing to the apparition. "Oh, mamma!" came the answer in a shrill falsetto voice.

Jennie Nichols and the big assistant seized Mrs. Hoobler's hands just as she was about to clasp what she believed to be the spirit of her daughter in her arms.

"You must not touch it," Jennie Nichols told her, "or the spirit will go away."

The poor, almost frantic woman kneeled before the apparition. Barry thought it was time to get busy, and he whispered softly to Carroll: "Watch out, there's going to be a pinch." Then he threw on the flashlight and whistled for the squad outside to come in.

Just as he did this the "spook" in front of him looked so realistic that for the life of him he couldn't decide whether he was going up against a real spirit or not. But he took a chance and grabbed for it. Even when he had hold of it and knew it must be flesh and blood, it seemed so slimy, with the white stuff rubbed over it, that he felt his hair rising.

Just about that time the medium outfit got busy. The big man who had been helping Jennie Nichols hold the hands of the people who were trying to grab the spirits of their dead hit Barry over the head with some sort of a club that knocked him to the floor. Jennie Nichols put out the light entirely, grabbed Barry's flashlight and began pounding him over the head with it. They went to the floor in a rough and tumble scrimmage, the crowd on top of them, yelling and screaming.

In the next room Carroll was busy, too. He got hold of Mrs. Catherine Nichols, the mother, who had been helping with the show, and he was beset by spectators who were incensed because the seance had been broken up.

WOOLDRIDGE TAKES A HAND.

When Detective Wooldridge and his detail broke down the doors of the hall and made their entrance into the place it was pitch dark, and they had to strike matches before they could separate the combatants.

After a semblance of order had been restored in the place the premises were searched, and a most astounding outfit of disguises discovered. Before this development the spectators, who had been held in the place, were very angry with the officers, saying that they had been attending the seances for the last two years; that they knew Jennie Nichols as a medium had shown them the spirits of their dead. When the officers produced Sarah Nichols, to whom Detective Barry had held when he seized the "spook," they discovered that she had been wearing a pair of sandal slippers with felt five inches thick for soles; a pair of men's black trousers and the white shroud and painted picture face of a young girl.

Attached to a pole in front of her was a paper head, around which was a white shroud four feet in length. Those in attendance believed this image to be the spirit of a believer's dead relative. The "medium" had "spook" images of men, women and children, and could produce them as circumstances demanded. The light was turned up, and the contemptible imposition on credulity was exposed to twenty-six dupes, who had been paying $1 apiece for the privilege of attending meetings of the "spook" grafters for years. It was the greatest exposé of "spooks" that has been made in many years. A wagon load of masks, wigs, false whiskers, tin horns, gowns with safety pins in them, skulls and skeletons with cross-bones to match, were seized.

WOMEN REFUSE TO TALK.

At the station the women refused to talk. Sarah Nichols, the "spook," had donned a house dress before she was taken to the station. Jennie Nichols, the "medium," was dressed in a neat black gown of rich material. The mother appeared in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist. The latter is a gray-haired woman apparently about 50 years old. She wept copiously. Sarah Nichols also wept. In the scrimmage after the arrest her ear had been injured, and it was bleeding when the trio was booked at the station.

Jennie Nichols was the most composed of all. She held a palm leaf fan in front of her face and above it twinkled a pair of shrewd blue eyes. As she and her relatives were led from the private room at Harrison street she even laughed, although her mother and her sister were in tears, and her victims were denouncing her for having robbed them, through their credulity, of hundreds of dollars, which many of them could ill afford to lose.

WOOLDRIDGE MAKES GHOST WALK IN POLICE COURT.

A "spook" sat on the bench with Justice Prindiville. He made ghosts walk and graveyards yawn.

The "spook" was Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge.

When Miss Sarah Nichols, "the ghost," Miss Jennie Nichols, "the trance medium," and Mrs. Catherine Nichols, mother of the other two known as the "overseer," appeared in court to answer to charges of obtaining money by false pretenses through spiritualistic seances, Detective Wooldridge crowded to the center of the stage.

He bore a great board, on which were tacked white shrouds, grinning skulls and cross-bones, the costume of an Indian, and other instruments of the medium's trade.

"For the benefit of the public at large," he said, addressing the court, "I ask permission to expose the methods of these fake spiritualists."

The permission was given, and "Spook" Wooldridge took the wool sack.

"SPOOK" WOOLDRIDGE DEMONSTRATES.

He lit the punk with which the mediums were wont to light up the skull. He burned incense. He put on a white gown.

"This is Carrie's garment," he said, pointing to where "Ghost" Carrie, twenty-four years old and buxom, stood.

He went through the whole performance, save the grease paint. He started to daub his face with the stuff, which gave a ghostly hue, when the justice interrupted:

"You needn't dirty your face, Friend Spook. You've scored your points already." The "Spook" had, indeed.

Despite the exposures, many women and a few men who had come to hear the cases, expressed their devotion to the persons arrested and to the "cause."

They finally became so demonstrative that Justice Prindiville ordered the court room cleared of the "devotees."

"This is not a matinee, a spiritualists' meeting or a circus," said the Justice. "Let the devotees meet in the outer hall."

Fifty women, of all ages and many conditions of life, stood with mouths wide open and eyes bulging as Wooldridge went through his performance. They were the victims of the Nichols women.

Jennie Nichols and Sarah Nichols were fined $100 each.

ARREST SOUTH SIDE MEDIUMS.

To conclude the record of the day, Detectives Wooldridge and Barry, accompanied by two officers from the Cottage Grove station, visited a seance given by Clarence A. Beverly and Mrs. M. Dixon at Arlington hall, Thirty-first street and Indiana avenue. The officers bought tickets and awaited the performance. After a lecture on psychic problems by "Dr." Beverly and a programme of music rendered by children, "Dr." Dixon took the rostrum and went through a series of clairvoyant discoveries.

Among the things which she professed to predict while in her "trance" was a prognostication which had not a little to do with the developments of the evening. After she had pointed out a number of persons in the audience and told what they had done or should do, she discovered Wooldridge and singled him out.

"I see a man with glasses who has his hands crossed over his knees," she said. "I am governed by the spirit of John Googan, an Irishman. He gives you a message," pointing to Wooldridge, "and says that whatever John orders must be done."

At this Wooldridge, arising from his seat, advanced to the rostrum.

OFFICER SERVES PAPERS.

"John Collins, chief of police, says, Mrs. Dixon, that I am to put you under arrest under a state warrant charging you with receiving money by a confidence game. I also have a warrant charging the same offense against Clarence A. Beverly. Dr. Beverly, please come forth."

Dr. Beverly presented himself, and both he and Mrs. Dixon were taken to Harrison street, where strenuous efforts on their behalf on the part of "Dr." Harry H. Tobias, spiritual mental healer, with offices at 118 East Thirty-third street, and others, failed to procure them bonds.

The arrest of Beverly and Mrs. Dixon was made on a warrant signed by Miss Miller, who had entered into correspondence with them from her home in Portland, Ore. The fee in Chicago was to have been $50, according to the letters she received from the mediums, as in the preceding instance. She borrowed money to come to Chicago, and had but $25 to pay the "healers." When she received no benefit from their treatment she made complaint and was threatened with violence, she alleges. Thereupon she laid her case before Chief Collins, resulting in the raid and the closing up of this place.

Thus did the sleuth a-sleuthing vanquish the ubiquitous "spook," the "ghost," the "spirit," the re-incarnation, the Mahatma, the "sending," and all the hosts of the immaterial world, whose immaterialism was being converted into good hard material cash by the producers of the evanescent shapes from beyond the veil.

Thus did Clifton R. Wooldridge and his able assistants make "spooking" a dangerous business in Chicago.

WIFE OR GALLOWS?

PREFERS HANGING TO LIVING WITH HIS WIFE.

Hugo Devel prefers being hanged to living with his wife.

Unable to escape her in any other way, lacking the courage or nerve to kill himself, and shuddering at the idea of life imprisonment with the woman he had promised to love and cherish, he confessed to a murder he did not commit, and was ready to go upon the gallows or to penal servitude for life in the stead of the real murderer.

Now he is free, and miserable, and in his home at Lubeck, in Germany. He is envying Franz Holz, who is awaiting the gallows.

Devel admits sadly that he had a double purpose in wanting to die on the gallows. First, that he would escape his wife; and, second, that, by being hanged he would make it improbable that any other man should meet his fate--not his fate on the gallows, but his fate in having wedded Frau Devel.

The case, which was cleared up by the Hamburg police, furnished a problem that would have defied the cunning of Sherlock Holmes and all his kindred analysts. Briefly stated, the facts in the case, which is the strangest one ever given to a detective department to solve, are these:

WOMAN WAS ROBBED AND MURDERED.

A few months ago a certain Frau Gimble, of Munich, was cruelly murdered by a man. The evident motive of the deed was robbery, and that the crime was planned and premeditated there was sufficient evidence. Every clew and circumstance pointed to Franz Holz. He was known to have been at or near the scene of the murder shortly before its commission. He knew the woman, and had knowledge that she kept a considerable sum of money in her home. He was known to have been without money for days prior to the murder, and immediately after the deed, and before the body was discovered, he had appeared with a quantity of money, made some purchases, bought drinks for acquaintances, and then disappeared.

The police were on his trail within a short time after the finding of the body of the murdered woman. Holz had fled toward Berlin, and a warning was sent in all directions, containing descriptions of the fugitive.

The awfulness of the deed attracted the more attention because of the locality and the ruthless and cruel manner of its commission. While the police were making a rapid search for the fugitive Holz, Hugo Devel, a well-to-do tradesman in Lubeck, surrendered himself to the police of his home town and confessed that he, and not Holz, had committed the crime. Devel had been in Hamburg at the time the crime was committed. His confession, which destroyed all the evidence and all the theories implicating Holz, staggered the detectives.

DEVEL CONFESSES TO THE CRIME.

Although apparently saved from a remarkable network of circumstantial evidence, and no longer wanted for the murder of the Gimble woman, the German police reasoned that Holz, if he had not fled because of that crime, must have fled because of some other crime. So the department, which has a name a couple of feet long, which in English would mean, "the department for finding out everything about everybody," kept on the trail.

Meantime the police of Hamburg got possession of Devel and examined him. From the first they were uneasy. He confessed that he murdered the woman to get her money, and beyond that would not tell anything. It is not customary for the police to insist that a man who confesses that he is guilty of murder shall prove it, but there were facts known to the police which made them wonder how it was possible for Devel to have killed the woman. They used the common police methods, and made the prisoner talk. The more he talked the more apparent it became to the police that he was innocent, although he still claimed vehemently that he, and he alone, killed the Gimble woman.

POLICE LEARN HE IS NOT GUILTY.

Some of his statements were ridiculous. For instance, he did not know what quarter of the city the woman lived in. He did not know how she had been murdered. He said he climbed through a window and killed the woman. When pressed, he said the window was the dining-room window. In view of the fact that she was killed while working in a little open, outdoor kitchen when murdered, the police became satisfied that Devel was not the man, and ordered the pursuit of Holz resumed by all departments.

The case even then was a remarkable one, and one which would have defied any theoretical detective. The police proved that it was impossible that Devel should be confessing in order to shield Holz--first, because he never knew Holz; and second, because the police had informed him that the real murderer was in custody, in order to discover a reason for his confession. It was suspected that Devel was partly insane and seeking notoriety. Everything in his life refuted that idea. He was a quiet, orderly citizen, who seldom read newspapers, and who neither was interested in crime or criminals. He owned a small business in Lubeck, attended to it strictly, drank little, and apparently was as sane as any one.

SEARCHING FOR MOTIVE OF CONFESSION.

The case worried the police officials. The absolute lack of reason for Devel's confession stimulated their curiosity. He was held in custody for weeks, and then the police gave up in despair, and, as Holz had been arrested and had confessed to everything, the release of Devel was ordered. The order of release proved the move that revealed the truth. When he was told that he was free to return home, Devel broke down and begged the police to keep him in prison, to hang him, to poison him, but not to send him home.

In his agony he confessed that the only reason he confessed the murder was that he desired to get hanged, and that he preferred hanging to life with his wife.

The hard-hearted police set him free--literally threw him out of the prison, and he returned to his wife in Lubeck. The following day he resumed charge of his business.

An English correspondent visited Devel in his shop and made certain inquiries of him regarding the case. As the hanging editor would say, "the condemned man was nervous." He was afraid his wife would read what he said, but the correspondent finally got him to tell.

"I desired to be hung," said Devel, mournfully. "Life is not worth the living, and with my wife it is worse than death. If I had been hanged no other man would marry my wife, and I would save them from my fate. Many times have I planned to kill myself to escape her. That is sin, and I lack the bravery to kill myself, besides. If they will not hang me I must continue to live with my wife."

Devel states, among other things, that these are the chief grievances against married life in general, and his wife in particular:

She was slender, and became fat and strong.

She was beautiful, and became ugly and coarse.

She was tender, and grew hard.

She was loving, and grew virulent.

She grew whiskers on her chin.

She called him "pig."

She wore untidy clothes, and her hair was unkempt.

She refused to give him beer.

Her breath smelled of onions and of garlic.

She threw hot soup upon him.

She continually upbraided him because there were no
children.

She scolded him in the presence of neighbors.

She refused to permit him to bring his friends home.

She came into his store and scolded him.

She accused him of infidelity.

She disturbed him when he slept in the garden on Sundays.

She made him cook his own dinners.

She spilled his beer when he drank quietly with friends.

She told tales about him among the neighbors, and injured
his business.

She served his sausages and his soup cold, and sometimes
did not have his meals for him when he came home.

She did not make the beds nor clean the house.

She took cards out of his skat deck.

She talked continually, and scolded him for everything or
nothing.

She opened the windows when he closed them, and closed them
when he opened them.

She poured water into his shoes while he slept.

She cut off his dachshund's tail.

These things, he said, made him prefer to be hanged to living with her.

Incidentally Holz, who is awaiting execution, expresses an earnest desire to trade places with Herr Devel.

There is no accounting for tastes.

A CLEVER SHOPLIFTER.

DETECTIVE WOOLDRIDGE FINDS A FAIR CRIMINAL.

While passing through the Fair, one of the largest retail dry goods establishments in Chicago, Detective Wooldridge noticed one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever operated in Chicago, Bertha Lebecke, known as "Fainting Bertha."

She was standing in front of the handkerchief counter, where her actions attracted Wooldridge's attention, and he concluded to watch her. She called the girl's attention to something on the shelf and as she turned to get it Bertha's hand reached out and took a half dozen expensive lace handkerchiefs, which disappeared in the folds of her skirt.

The act was performed so quickly and with such cleverness that it would have gone unnoticed unless one were looking right at her and saw her take the handkerchiefs.

From the handkerchief counter she went to the drug department, where she secured several bottles of perfume. As she was leaving this counter she met a Central detective who had arrested her before for the same offense. He stopped a few yards from her to make some trifling purchases. She, thinking he was watching her, left the store.

From the Fair she went to Siegel-Cooper's, another large dry goods store several blocks away. Detective Wooldridge followed her. She was seen to go from counter to counter, and from each one she succeeded in getting some article.

As she was leaving the store she was placed under arrest by Detective Wooldridge and taken to the Police Station.

When she was arrested she fainted, and a great crowd gathered around her, and many of the women cried and implored Detective Wooldridge not to arrest her, but he would not be moved by any of them to let her go free.

When she arrived at the Police Station she was searched, and beneath the folds of her skirt was found a strong waist pocket which looked like a petticoat. It consisted of two pieces of material gathered full at the top with a strong cord or puckering string run through, and sewed together around the edges. In front of this great bag was a slit two feet long opening from the top to within a few inches of the bottom. This petticoat was worn under the dress skirt. On each side of the outside skirt was a long slit concealed by the folds of the skirt, and with one hand she could slip the stolen articles in through the slit in the inside of her dress and into the petticoat bag to the opening in front. The capacity of the bag was enormous. She had stolen some $40 or $50 worth of goods when arrested. The following morning she was arraigned in the Police Court and heavily fined, and the goods were restored to the merchants.

Bertha Lebecke, 27 years old, is conceded by Illinois state authorities to be the most troublesome person who ever crossed the state line from any direction at any time.

Just how large a cash bonus the state treasury today might be willing to advance could it be assured of Bertha's deportation forever beyond the confines of Illinois is something difficult to estimate, but it is certain that in the asylums for the insane at Kankakee, Elgin and Bartonville, and in the state penitentiary at Joliet there are attendants on salaries who would make personal contributions to help swell the possible fund.

Yet "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke is one of the prettiest, blondest, most delicate handed little bits of well-developed femininity that ever made a marked success in deceiving people of both sexes and all conditions in public, afterwards deceiving officials of jails, asylums and penitentiaries until bars and gates and frowning walls were as cobwebs before her.

SLEEPS ALL DAY; MAKES NIGHT HIDEOUS.

Gates of steel never have held her in jail or asylum. In the mightier penitentiaries she has made herself such an uncontrolled fury by night--sleeping calmly all day long and resting for the next seance--that penitentiary gates have opened for her in the hope of having her maintained as an asylum ward. After which "Fainting Bertha" has secured keys to asylum doors and gone her untrammeled way straight back to a police record which for years has shown her to be one of the most remarkable pickpockets, diamond snatchers and shoplifters of her time.

Making such a nuisance of herself in the penitentiary as no longer to be tolerated in a refined convict community, she proves her madness. In the locked, barred, asylum she proves her cunning at escape. And, once more at liberty, the abandon with which she goes after personal property in any form, at any time and under any circumstances, proves her skill as a thief and her unbalance in the "get away."

There is her escape from the asylum at Elgin on the night of December 25, 1904. Christmas eve she had fainted in the arms of an attendant and in the scurrying which followed had secured the keys to the gates. On the night of Christmas she went out of the Elgin asylum, boarded an electric car for Aurora and bought a railroad ticket to Peoria.

STOLE $1,000 WORTH OF GOODS IN TWO DAYS.

On the way to Peoria she relieved the conductor of $30 in bills, secreting them in her hat. In Peoria, within forty-eight hours, she had stolen a thousand dollars' worth of goods from stores, registered at three hotels under assumed names, and was in a chair car with a ticket for Omaha when the Peoria police had followed her easy tracks through the city. Perhaps the broadest, most easily identified track was that which she left in a barber shop in the National Hotel, where she appeared for an egg shampoo. Two eggs had been broken into her shiny hair when Bertha promptly fainted and rolled out of the chair. As a count of shop equipment showed nothing missing an hour later, the barber shop proprietor was at a loss as to the purpose of the faint.

This girlish young woman, with the baby dimples and skin of peach and cream, the innocent blue eyes, and the smiles that play so easily over her face as she talks vivaciously and with keen sense of both wit and humor, is a study for the psychologist. There is no affectedness of speech--for the moment it is childishly genuine. She could sit in a drawing room and have half a dozen admirers in her train.

But reform schools, asylums and penitentiaries are institutions through which this young woman has graduated up to that pinnacle of notorious accomplishment which today is centering upon "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke the official attentions of a great state. What to do with her is the question.

KEPT AT SOUTH BARTONVILLE WITHOUT LOCKS.

Dr. George A. Zeller, superintendent of the asylum for the incurable insane at South Bartonville, having fought for the care of Bertha in his institution, purposes to make her a tractable patient and willing to remain. He has the history of his institution back of him, from whose doors and windows he has torn away $6,000 worth of steel netting and steel bars.

In the first place, "Fainting Bertha" will have nothing to gain by fainting at Bartonville; she is promised merely a drowning dash of cold water when she falls. She can secure no keys by fainting, for the reason that there are no keys to doors. A nurse, wideawake for her eight-hour nursing duty, is always at hand and always watchful.

"Take away the show of restraint if you would have a patient cease fighting against restraint," is the philosophy of Dr. Zeller. "Human vigilance always was and always will be the greatest safeguard for the insane."

If "Fainting Bertha" Lebecke were a grizzled amazon, even, she might be a simpler proposition for the state. She is too pretty and plump, however, to think of restraining by the harsher methods, if harsh methods are employed. She can pass out of a storm of hysterical tears in an instant and smile through them like a stream of sunshine. Or as quickly she can throw off the pretty little witticism and airy conceit of her baby hands and become a vixen fury with blazing blue eyes that are a warning to her antagonist.

And at large, exercising her charms, she can become the "good fellow" to the everlasting disappearance of half a dozen different valuables in one's tie or pockets.

HISTORY OF "FAINTING BERTHA."

Bertha Lebecke says she was born in Council Bluffs, Ia., in 1880. Save for the trick of raising her brows while animated, thus wrinkling her forehead before her time, she might pass easily for twenty-three years of age. In these twenty-seven years, however, Bertha Lebecke has kept the institutions of four states guessing--to some extent experimenting.

Her father was a cobbler, and there were five children, only one other of them living. The father is dead. The mother, with the one sister, is living in Council Bluffs. Seven asylums and one state's prison have held her--for a time; Kankakee three times and Elgin twice, with two escapes from each place credited to her childish cunning. But today the face of Bertha Lebecke in trouble anywhere in Christian civilization would draw helping funds for less than her asking.

"Don't write that I am the awful creature that the papers have pictured me," she exclaimed, with a tragic movement of her little hands. "Oh, I have been a bad girl--I know that--but not as bad as they accuse me of being," burying her face in her arm.

But in a moment she was sitting up, dry eyed, stitching on the bit of linen "drawn work" which she said was intended for Gov. Deneen at Springfield.

CRITICISES THE LINEN PURCHASED BY THE STATE.

"But what awful linen!" she exclaimed, holding it out to Dr. Zeller as she sat in a ward with twenty other women inmates regarded as among the hardest to watch and control among the 1,900 inmates of the great institution. "I'm surprised at you! Can't you buy better linen than that?"

But while she talked and the doctor smiled, a small key fitting nothing in particular was laid by Dr. Zeller close at hand and it disappeared in ten seconds. Likewise a pencil from the doctor's pocket found its way almost unnoticed into "Fainting Bertha's" blonde hair. Her smiling face all turned to frowns when finally, one at a time, he took the key from her waist and the pencil from its hiding place in her hair.

"Did you ever know a man named Gunther?" asked Dr. Zeller suddenly.

"Yes--what of it?" she asked quickly, with a show of nervousness.

"He is in the penitentiary."

"Good! Good!" exclaimed the girl. "I'm delighted to hear it. He ought to have been there long ago, and he ought to stay there the rest of his life!"

This was the man whom Bertha charged with responsibility for her first wrong step as a girl, sending her first to the Glenwood (Ia.) Home for the Feebleminded. Later she charges that this man taught her the fainting trick, by which she faints in the arms of a man or woman wearing jewelry or carrying money and in the confusion biting the stone from a pin and swallowing it, or with small, supple hand taking a purse from a pocket or a watch from its fob, perhaps with innocent eyes and dimpled face assisting the loser in the search for the missing valuable.

BERTHA SAYS GUNTHER PROMISED TO MARRY HER.

"That man Gunther promised to marry me," she said, lowering her voice. "He sent me out to steal and when I wouldn't do it he used to beat me when I came home. Do you wonder I'm what I am?"

There was a burst of what might have been tears. Her face was buried and her figure shook with sobs. But in five seconds the dimpled face appeared again, dry eyed, and at a remark on the moment she turned toward her auditors, winking an eyelid slyly.

"Fainting Bertha" Lebecke has almost lost consecutive track of the asylums and prisons in which she has been locked.

From this Glenwood home for the feebleminded she was released. She got into trouble again and was sent to the Clarinda State Hospital for the Insane. Here, in the words of the superintendent, she was looked upon as a case of "moral imbecility, with some maniacal complications." Here an operation was performed, and, in the opinion of the superintendent, she was eligible to discharge soon afterwards as improved.

St. Bernard's Asylum at Council Bluffs cared for her for a time, but she succeeded in escaping from it and was not returned.

In Asylum No. 3 at Nevada, Mo., in spite of the close watch kept upon her, "Fainting Bertha" escaped several times, but was caught soon after and returned to the institution. On December 21, 1901, she was discharged as not insane and returned to Omaha, where she had lived for a time. Here Bertha remained about two years, acting as a maid of all work in households. Her experience in Chicago and Illinois is stranger than any fiction.

MOST UNRULY PRISONER IN JOLIET.

On a charge of shoplifting she was given an indeterminate sentence of one to ten years in the penitentiary at Joliet.

Records of Joliet prison show her to have been the most unruly prisoner ever confined in that institution. Her conduct was such that Prison Physician Fletcher declared that she was insane and she was sent to the asylum at Kankakee.

Twice she escaped from Kankakee, once, she says, with the aid of an employee of the institution, whom she refuses to name. This first escape was made within four months of her arrival at the institution; the second after a year. On her return to that institution for criminals her actions were such that the hospital authorities decided that she was not insane and sent her back to Joliet prison.

On this second imprisonment "Fainting Bertha" showed what she could do in making herself impossible even in a prison. Her cell was in the north wing of the building, overlooking the street. She would appear in the window with her clothing torn to ribbons, shrieking that she was being murdered. According to prison officials, there was no language too impossible for her glib tongue. Her furies of temper caused her to heap unspeakable abuse upon matrons and guards alike. Deputy Warden Sims, responsible for order and discipline, says he has been abused by her beyond belief. Her plan was to sleep in daylight and make the whole night hideous with her screams and cries and unspeakable language.

PENITENTIARY GLAD TO BE RID OF HER.

As a last resort the tortured prison officials at Joliet, taking the diagnosis of Physician Fletcher, sent her to the care of Supt. Podstata at the Elgin asylum. There, after consultation of the asylum physicians, it was found that she should have been confined in an asylum for the feebleminded when she was younger; that, lacking this treatment, she had grown and developed such destructive tendencies that a hospital for the insane was the only haven for her.

But Bertha escaped from the asylum, which has for its safeguards the lock and the steel bar. Locks and bars are nothing to "Fainting Bertha"! She was recaptured and returned, only that she might escape again on Christmas night, finding her way to Peoria, where her escapades in going through the town were marvels to the Peoria police. The conductor on the Peoria train from whom she took $30 has not claimed his money. But half a dozen stores in which she operated and the salesman from whose samples in the Fey Hotel she took hundreds of dollars worth of silks, jewelry, clothing and perfumes got back some of the plunder, which detectives found piled around her in a chair car in an Omaha train.

The Peoria police locked her up, and while the charges rested Dr. Zeller, of the asylum for the incurable insane at South Bartonville, asked of Dr. Podstata and the penitentiary authorities the custody of "Fainting Bertha." Warden Murphy at Joliet was delighted at the idea. Supt. Podstata at Elgin was as greatly pleased. Dr. Zeller at South Bartonville Asylum for the Incurable Insane, receiving the young woman, was conscious of having a unique addition to the 1,929 other inmates of his barless cottages of detention. In the history of the South Bartonville asylum only one female inmate has escaped, and she was found dead soon afterwards in a ravine into which she had fallen.

PALE BLUE COLOR SCHEME OF BERTHA'S WARD.

"If Bertha escapes here it will be the test of vigilance as opposed to locks and steel bars," is the summing up of the situation by Dr. Zeller. Bertha is not wholly satisfied where she is. The food is not all she desires. She refers to her ward and its environment as "the dump." Yet her particular "dump" is decorated in pale blue--part of the color scheme of the asylum management,--the color scheme of her ward being adapted to her particular temperamental degree of insanity. But while Bertha has been gnawing diamonds from tie pins, one of her fraternity in ward classification has a record of gnawing the woodwork from at least a dozen other insane wards in as many institutions for the insane.

How subtly conscious of her position "Fainting Bertha" may be on occasion was demonstrated the other day when it was arranged with Dr. Zeller that she should go with two nurses and the staff member in Peoria in order that her picture might be taken in a local gallery.

DELIGHTED AT CHANCE OF GOING TO TOWN.

With $9 to her credit in the asylum's system of personal accounts, Bertha wanted some of this sum for "shopping," but when it was refused she accepted the situation without particular protest. The idea of going uptown, five miles from South Bartonville, was delightful. Her spirits rose high at the idea, and when her nurses had brought her over to the administration building she dropped into the office chair occupied by Dr. Zeller, and in mock seriousness turned to the little group, asking what she could do for them.

On the Pekin and Peoria electric road she was banked in next the window by her escorts, and was the pink of propriety until Peoria was reached, save as occasionally she turned backward toward the conductor and smiled. And invariably the conductor smiled in return!

"Honey" was her designation of Nurse Quick. "I'm a perfect lady, ain't I, Honey?" she repeated a score of times on the trip. In the photographer's gallery the snap of the camera shutter brought a start from the object of the lens, and the first picture in six years, save as the police authority of the state had insisted that she pose for it.

But after the ordeal at the photographer's Bertha wanted most of all a "square meal." Miss Quick knew of a restaurant where quiet prevailed and where there would be little incentive to Bertha to faint, and there the little party adjourned for the "square meal." Pie--apple or mince--was the dessert.

TOOK PIE AND CANDY BACK "HOME."

"You won't mind, honey, if I take a pie home, will you?"

Miss Quick didn't mind at all. And not minding the pie, Miss Bertha promptly buttered four rolls liberally and included in the package a bunch of celery which had been left over after she had passed it around insistently, time and again. At the candy counter just outside the dining room Bertha balked amiably.

"I don't like to presume on your good nature, but I know you won't object to a small box of candy?" she purred.

The nurse didn't object to the 25-cent box; which was an inspiration to "Fainting Bertha."

"But don't you think this is ever so much nicer?"

The nurse had to admit that it was. It was a half-dollar box of mixed candies!

"But I'm afraid it looks like imposing on your good nature just a little?" she smiled, as the cashier proceeded to wrap it up. "And you don't mind, honey?" to Miss Quick, who smiled indulgently, and with the pie, rolls, and celery in one hand and the box of candy in the other, Bertha started back to the Asylum for the Incurable Insane at South Bartonville, five miles away.

DETENTION RECORD OF "FAINTING BERTHA."

Asylum for the Feeble Minded, Glenwood, Ia. Discharged.

Insane asylum, Glenwood, Ia. Discharged.

Insane asylum, Nevada, Mo. Discharged after several escapes.

St. Bernard's asylum, Council Bluffs, Ia. Discharged.

Indeterminate sentence at Joliet penitentiary.

Kankakee, Ill., Asylum for the Insane. Escaped.

Kankakee, Ill., Asylum for the Insane. Escaped.

Kankakee, Ill., Asylum for the Insane. Returned to Joliet
penitentiary.

Elgin, Ill., Asylum for the Insane. Escaped.

Elgin, Ill., Asylum for the Insane. Escaped.

Present address, Asylum for the Incurable Insane, South
Bartonville, Ill.

But even the genial Dr. Zeller and his barless windows and lockless prison proved in time to be enervating to such a restless being as "Fainting Bertha." So, during June, 1908, she made no less than three attempts to escape. She was, however, apprehended in each case before she reached Peoria, and returned to the asylum. The authorities declare that she was really playing for theatrical effect rather than from any desire to get away from Bartonville. Be that as it may, the fact remains that if she desires to get out of Bartonville she probably will, as she is the most resourceful criminal of her sex known to the authorities.

FRONT.

A good front is a distinct asset. A good front is made up of neat, clean clothes, on a clean body, the whole housing a clean mind. A man with clean clothes on a dirty body, or dirty clothes on a clean body, is not wanted anywhere in the business world; and there is no place in the heavens above or the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, that has room for the man with the dirty mind.

But with the clean mind inside the clean body, and neat, simple, clean clothes on the outside of it, the young man has all the essentials of a good front. Anything more is superfluous and tends to make him ridiculous. Simplicity is the keynote.

This moralizing on the value of front is suggested by observations and comparisons of the habits of certain Chicago millionaires, and the ways of some of their cheap clerks, the latter having exaggerated ideas of putting up a false appearance of prosperity.

These comparisons were so striking that they attracted the attention of Detective Clifton R. Wooldridge, and during the course of his regular work he found time to tabulate a little, with startling results.

The detective found that there are in Chicago many young men living on very meager salaries, who have such exaggerated notions of the value of a prosperous appearance that they overshoot the mark, and frequently, as result of trying, as they think, to "look like a millionaire," they often succeed in looking very much like the famous animal with very long ears and a loud voice which one spoke to the prophet Baalam.

"It is easy to distinguish the real millionaire," said the great detective, in discussing this subject. "If he wants to get anywhere in a great city and his automobile happens to be engaged, he takes the same means of getting there as does the toiler in the mills or factory; he walks, or he rubs elbows on the street cars with the laboring men, many of whom never know that they are brushing against the owner of millions."

STANLEY FIELD'S BUGGY.

"Stanley Field runs around town in a crazy old country buggy, just like a farmer. He took this method of going about when the great teamsters' strike was on, and he was a member of the Merchants' committee.

"But I will bet you a good cigar that there are any number of little snippety ten-dollar clerks in the great establishment of which Stanley Field is the head, who would feel themselves eternally disgraced if they were seen in that buggy.

"Not for little mister-ten-dollar clerk! No, sir. He must go out and spend three dollars for a cab if he wants to get down town to a theatre. It is just this silly pride that makes forgers and embezzlers.

"My advice to young men would be, 'Keep your mind clean, your body clean and your clothes neat and clean. Never mind about fancy show. Men will respect you more if you follow this advice than they will if you squander money foolishly in the effort to put up a false front which deceives no one.'"

Out of hundreds of cases which Wooldridge has run down, where embezzlement, forgery and theft, even of the pettiest sort, was at the bottom of the crime, the great detective declares that fully half of the cases had their origin in this silly attempt to appear something more than the real thing. Silly pride is a teacher of crime, and a sure school mistress she is.

And the absurdity, the bally foolishness of it all, is that these pitiful attempts deceive no one. Every one knows solidity when they see it, just as they know sham when they see it. A self-respecting young man cannot afford to make of himself a sham, even by taking a cab when the millionaires walk or take the street car.

FAKE PRIDE LEADS TO CRIME.

On the other hand, many young men have plunged into a life of crime through over-spending their salaries, in the effort to convince every one who looked at them that they were on the directorate of the Standard Oil Company. Where the millionaire walks these silly young jackasses take a cab, and pay half a day's salary in order to ride two or three blocks.

"I have seen John J. Mitchell, the president of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, and one of our foremost financiers, walk from the Northwestern station to the bank building, while right behind him a young donkey, who was working for $25 a week in that very bank, would pay a cabby a dollar to drive him the seven short blocks from that same station to the bank.

"It is just such young pinheads as that who afterwards turn out to be our embezzlers, forgers and financial criminals."

The man who has made a name which is known in every corner of the United States as an authority on all kinds of frauds, snorted his indignation as he thought of the silly bank clerk. Then he continued:

"Does anybody ever see Arthur Meeker take a cab to ride a few blocks? Not on your life. He walks. So does Cyrus McCormick, Harold McCormick, R. Hall McCormick, Frank Lowden, and any number of the other men whose names stand at the top of Chicago finance. I see Frank Lowden on the Indiana avenue cars, the line I take myself, time after time. He is one of the most democratic of men."

LAST CHANCE GONE.

IDENTIFICATION BUREAU AIDED BY NATURE.

The Criminal and the Crooked Members of the Human Race Have a New and Dangerous Enemy in the Finger Print Method of Identification.

The last hope of the enemies of society, the habitual criminals, is gone. The Bertillon system sounded the death knell of the criminal so far as capture was concerned. The finger print system, as first set forth by Sir Francis Galton and elaborated by Sir Edward Henry, has made possible the absolute identification after capture.

One of the first men to see the tremendous possibilities of the finger print system, as applied to the identification of suspects, was Detective Clifton E. Wooldridge of Chicago. Through his efforts and that of others equally interested in the exact identification of criminals, the Chicago Police Department established the finger print method of identification in 1905, as a Supplement to the Bertillon system which was established in 1887.

The Bertillon system catches the suspect. The finger print system makes sure that he is the criminal. The Bertillon system, while a splendid thing for catching the thief, still left some loop-holes which needed strengthening. This was supplied by the finger print system. Like the man and woman referred to in Longfellow's Hiawatha it is a case of "useless each without the other." When the two systems are worked together there is absolutely no possible escape for the apprehended suspect.

The Chicago Police Bureau of Identification is the second largest in the world, and contains over 70,000 pictures.

The Bertillon System of Identification by Measurement.]

By combining the Bertillon measurements with the finger-print system the police department has woven a network of identification around the criminal which makes it practically an impossibility for him ever to disguise himself should he at any future time fall into the hands of the officials of the law.

The finger print method was discovered about forty years ago by Sir William Herschell, then an English official in India. Sir Francis Galton, a Fellow of the Royal Society, was the first to systematize it, and the first to establish the fact that the papillary ridges of the fingers did not change through life. This was nearly twenty years ago. Sir Francis Galton made the calculation that the chance of any two sets of finger prints being the same is one in 16,400,000,000, and as an article from which the writer quotes states, "there are only 1,600,000,000 people in the world," its population would have to be increased ten times before two people were identical and means that a finger print as a mark of identification is practically infallible.

PERFECTED IN LONDON.

Sir Edward Henry, Chief Police Commissioner, London, England, is the man who perfected the system, as it is now used, classifying finger prints by signs and numerals, so that it is now considered perfect.

The finger prints of women are the same as men, except in size, while the prints of negroes are the clearest and strongest, owing to the thickness of skin and moisture from perspiration, and it has not yet been demonstrated that finger prints are any indication of character.

While quite a large number of cities and penal institutions in the United States have adopted and are now using the Bertillon system of criminal identification, it is to be regretted that it has not been more generally adopted by all cities of a population not less than 5,000, and by all penitentiaries, reformatories and county jails. Universally applied under competent instructors, nearly every professional criminal would, in a few years, be recorded, so that it would only become necessary to keep up with the new additions to the ranks of the criminal classes.

It has been thoroughly established that the papillary ridges of fingers never change during life. From infancy to senility and until long after death no change ensues in the fingers. Though partially destroyed by injury, the original lines retain their pristine characteristics when healed.

This is nature's method of identification, and no record can be found of the digits of two persons having exactly the same characteristics. Numerous instances could be cited of twins and triplets whose finger prints afforded the only means of distinguishing one from the other.

The above is an enlarged print of a right index finger, which we classify as an Ulnar Loop. Loops on different fingers are not all alike, but vary in many important characteristics, so it is a very easy matter to distinguish one from another.]

INSTRUCTIONS FOR TAKING FINGER PRINTS.

Instruments required: A piece of tin, ordinary printer's ink, and a 10-cent rubber roller are all the tools necessary for getting the impression. It requires no special training to take finger impression, and any rural constable can, with ten minutes' practice, take a set of good finger prints in five minutes. After having a week's practice he could take them in three minutes.

SCOTLAND YARD METHOD.

At Scotland Yard a metallic brace is in use for the purpose of forcing refractory prisoners to leave correct impressions upon the records. One application of this brace is persuasive enough to cause the culprit to hasten to comply with a request for his signature.