Connecticut western news., 1876-08-18

Great Scandal in Lee.-The Lee Clean CT of last week says:
 Rumors have been afloat tor some time duplicating our leading physician. Dr. H. A. Fitch, in numerous scandalous affairs. but the public were hardly prepared for the astounding events of last Friday evening, ot which these rumors proved to be the foreshadows. Sheriff Austin w. Kellogg of Pittsfield arrested Dr. Fitch on the charge of adultery, with evidence so con- elusive that the Doctor, when arraigned be. fore Judge Pease, plead guilty, though he had previously denied the charges in toto when questioned by his friends. The judge fixed his bonds at $1,OOO, and to save him from the disgrace of going to jail, and in consideration of past kindness, Mir. Peter Quackenbush became surety. Saturday morning other writs were issued for the doctor, but he had absconded for parts un known. MT. Quackenbush took possession of his office with it's goods and chattels, and this probably ends the career, in this place, ot dentist whose beginning was under most favorable auspices. All sorts of ru- mors are afoat of MT. Fitch's doings, many of them doubtless exaggerated, and some of them totally false. It was at first said that he had taken improper liberties with the persons of some of his patients while under the influence of anesthetics, but it appears that his rooms were the resort of numerous women of the baser sort, and that this at | tracted the attention of some young men who determined to ascertain the truth in the case, and the facts in the case verified their worst suspicious. What makes the case one of unusual severity is that the fair | name of numerous women is stained, and rumor confounds the innocent and guilty. In such case charity should have her per feet work, and the maxim that every one must be esteemed innocent till proved gull | ty should be remembered. This is the | worst case of scandal that has ever occurred in our community, and we chronicle It with deep regret. As moral we must add a remark of the late Dr. Osgood of Spring | field on similar affair: ''Satan leads men of it as best they can."
 The Lee Chronicle says:
 We have no disposition to deal with the gossip of the case. Many ladies, both mar ried and single, and of good and ill report, are mixed up with the affair, according to rumor. Doubtless many are thus soiled | who are in reality innocent, and some of the guilty, perhaps, escape.
 Further particulars as they come to us, say that the young men (alluded to in the account from the Cleaner, above) were clerks in the stores, who, perhaps with the advice and counsel of older heads who had grave suspicious of mischief, ascended to l the flat roof of the block in which were the | rooms of the doctor, and cautiously peeped down through the sky-light, when they were almost transixed with horror at what their eyes beheld. Time after time was this done by the young men, till eight d!ff- ferent ac0naen were actually seen. in crimi- nal intimacy with this fend of lust. Of these eight, four, according to report, were young married women and young ladies, and were those against whom a shade of suspicion could not previously have been entertained. They were held in the highest esteem, went in the best society, and two or three of them were members in good standing in the Congregational and other churches, and manifestly very devout. The scamp has gone and that will perhaps be the end of the matter, but what common tary on what is called "society" at the pres ent day. Women, whose husbands, fath- CTS or brothers, regarded as pure as angels, practising regularly sin, greater than which can not be found amongst the dregs of the bottomless pit, and for how long g time, God, themselves and their paramoul only know! If one only had fallen, il could be said "She was weak" and only one among the many who would yield tc the seducer; but here are eight! four oi whom, the word infdelity. if connected with their names, would have been hurled with a vengeance in the face of whosoevel dared to speak it. Would it not have beer the greatest blessing to those fallen married women, if their husbands had been what people call "jealous husbands" and who when they saw what was at least suspicious had become disturbed, and perhaps soor enough to have saved their wives from ut
 ter ruin? There are some who are unrea- sonably jealous, so much so that they make everybody miserable about them, but tht above terrible result of too great confidence teaches that there are cases when indiffer
 ence is decidedly injurious, and there is no
 only no harm for those who are pure anC
 holy, to avoid even the appearance of evil
 but it is indlsputably wise and safe to d' so, and is the only course that can insure positive and absolute immunity from sus picion, whether that suspicion be just O |. | l1niuot