Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-02-01
WHITE-CAP INFAMY.
A Mother Dragged From Home and
Whipped Into Insensibility
In PRESENCE OF HER CHILDREN.
Absence of the Husband Taken Advantage
Of for the Purpose.
ELIMINATION OF A REIGN OF TERROR

NEW ALBANY, IND, Jan. d.-One
of the most horrible outrages that have been
committed by the White Caps of Harrison
and Crawford counties occurred last night IN
Harrison county, near the Crawford county
line, about 80 miles southwest of this city.
Jacob Perew, a farmer, poor but iaborious
and upright, had gone to Leavenworth, the
county seat of Crawford county, to visit his
aged father. who was ill, leaving his wife
Mary and four small children at their humble
home on the farm, just over the line in
Harrison county, and intending to remain
away all night. This was on the morning
of the Both. At midnight of that date a
gang of 20 masked men rode up to the Perew
dwelling, and dismounting marched into
the yard and up to the door and demanded
admission. Mrs. Perew was in bed and re-
fused to open the door. Then the White
Caps, after firing several shots from their
revolvers, procured rail, and with it
Battered Down the Door
and entered the house. Mrs. Perew had
left her BED, as had her four little children.
and when the savage Drutes entered. the
children were clinging in terror to their
mother, weeping and begging piteously that
the men would not hurt them. With mercl-
less barbarism the White Caps seized the
helpless woman in her night robes, tore her
shrieking children from her, dragged her
from the house and to a strip of woods on
the opposite side of the highway. where they
tied her face foremost to a tree, and with
stout switches literally laid open the flesh
from her shoulder to her hips, the blood
following every lick.
No fewer than 40 licks were given the
woman, the blows being rained upon her
after she had sunk in a faint against the
ropes that bound her to the tree.
While this awful scene of demonlac
savagery was going on, the four children OF
the wretched woman stood by weeping and
wringing their hands, and imploring the
brutes to desist, and not murder their
mother. Finally, the torturers left Mrs.
Perew, apparently in lifeless condition.
The Victim Is Innocent.
After they had gone the children went to
the house and got knife, with which they
cut the ropes that bound their mother, and
succeeded in getting her to the house. She
will probably not recover from the torture
she passed through. The White Gaps told
the children that they had whipped their
mother because she was not pure; but all
her relatives agree, as do all who know her,
that she is q woman of unspotted character.
In all the history of White Capism in
Harrison and Crawford counties, the whip
ping of Mrs. Perew is the vilest, the most
brutally savage crime they have committed.
The law is silent against them. Grand
iuries fail to indict them, or where indicted,
petit jurors, composed of White Caps or
White Cap sympathizers, clear the scoun-
drels or fail to agree, The result is that i'm
migrants avoid these counties, and many
of the better class of citizens in the White
Cap districts are moving to other localities,
where the law is respected land in opera
ton.