Alexandria gazette. [volume] (Alexandria, D.C.) 1834-1974, 1885-07-09
A SAD CASE.


increased the population of the country by
bringing over in her between decks some
nineteen hundred immigrants, mostly of the
poorer class of Prussian Poles. The voyage
was long, and when at last the ship was
made fast to the Hoboken pier the passen
gers were barely in a position to face the
dangers and hardships of life and a civil
ization as complex as their own.
On the pier pathetic scene was enacted.
Jacob Andrzezak, laborer, met his family
after separation of eighteen months. He
had left them in Posen to make them
home in America In the first flush of JOY
and of meeting he did not tell them that
the home which he had made was a most
precarious one, that his very existence was
dependent upon the whim of boss" He
noticed that the sea voyage, which most
men take to recuperate their health and
recreate their vital forces, had sadly disa-
greed with his wife, Magda, and the three
children.
The family crossed the ferry and walked
to No. 224! Twenty-second street, South
Brooklyn, where Andrzezak had rented a
room. A week later he was discharged
from his employment-in fact, there was no
more work to be DONE The three children
grew day by day more sickly, and queer
blotches appeared on their little BODIES.
Half distracted, the father paced the streets
for work and found none.
On the Fourth of July the tenement in
which the family had taken up their abode
was deserted by its other tenements. They
had gone to the sea shore and to the coun-
try. The strange Polish family celebrated
the day of independence, in gaining which
Pulaski fell, eating a hunk of rye bread
which Mag6a, the little girl of five years of
age, had found in neighbours ashbn. On
the morning of the 9th Sulka, the youngest
child, a babe of ten months, showed symp.
toms of approaching death which y mothers
heart intuitively understood. Insane with
grief, and with the child in her arms, the
mother rushed out into the sun flooded
streets Knowing not whittier she was go
ing she wandered about for more than an
hour. Suddenly her eyes fell upon sign
doctor Rich" She rang the. bell and
presented her child to the doctor for exami-
nation.
MADAM, your baby is dying" the Doctor
said.
Once again out into the sun flooded streets,
now animated with throngs of excursonists
and churchgoers, the distracted mother ran.
1t is short distance from Seventeenth to
Twenty street. The mother travers-
ed it inside of five minutes. When she
reached the doorstep, however, her child
was dead.
Monday morning Coroner Menninger Wis.
tied the afflicted family. He told the moth
or that her child had died of f"scurvy, super
induced by starvation" He kindly gave
her some money and said he would send
doctor who, however, at ten o'clock Monday
| night had not put in an appearance. The
| dead wagon did, however, and the liberated
little body of Sulka was taken away for in.
terment in the Potter's Field.
Monday evening the house presented a
strange spectacle. In the basementc children
were playing "tag;" on the stoop older
children were sparkling" while in the base
ment an angry woman in liquor was putting
her husband, who was similarly in liquor,
out of doors. In the second story back the
Andrzezak family exist. The father lay
prone upon his back on the floor. His
means were heartrending The lamp in the
hallway cast feeble light through the tran
som, and by it the mother could be seen
fondling to her bosom her two remaining
hapless children. Their faces were bound
up and covered with rags, and the room was
infected with strange odor, as OF burned
| human flesh, once breathed never to be for
gotten. Both children had the scurvy.
The unfortunate couple talked but little,
the husband spoke few words of German,
and in this language he made himselfunder-
stood.
"All want is work." he said, "work to
deaden my grief for Sulka bread to save
| the lives of Magda aud Michael"
The mother only sobbed.-N. J. Herald.