The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1899-07-14
KEPT LIKE 4 SWINE
Five-Year-0Id Boy. Rescued
From a Filthy Lair
BY THE GERRY SOCIETY
His Mother Is a Beast and
Treated Him Thus ViIely.
BY THE GERRY SOCIETY

New York, July 1S.-His name Is Joseph
Cass;ea and he was born In Chilli. His
misery Is spanned By the five years he
has lived. His happiest hour came yes
terday when he was taken from his air
shaft prison In the rear Of No. $50 West
Twenty-fifth street by Agent Fogerty, OF
the Gerry society.
He did not want to 60 with Fogerty.
He had been told by his mother that IL
any stranger saw him he would be beaten
more horribly than she beat him.
Why Maria Cassiea kept her son In the
weh-foul, damp and dark-with a dirty
quit upon which to rest and little shirt
to cover his nakedness, may never be
known.
Certain It is that for many months the
child has passed the greater part of his
time in that terrible place. Often ne has
passed the whole night there alone in the
blackness, with only theStans overhead.
while his mother and the three women
WHO lived in the unspeakable filthy two
rooms in the Old rear frnae tenement
were carouslng.
The boys father Is q seaman working on
South American ports. His mother Is very
dark with a suggestion OF former beauty.
She is old at twenty-five.
She first appeared in the old frame house
about a year ago, bringing the child with
her. It Is a place so far back from the
street as to be protected The little, half
naked children Of some of the other
women in the house were trained to act as
scouts. The appearance Of a policeman
was always signalled.
Only the women who live with afrs.
Cassiea, and perhaps some Of the others
In the house. knew of the existance Of
the child.
Even Captain Ross, of Engine Company
Nj 10, through whom JOSEPH was rescued,
did not know It until a little while ago
and he had been in the two rooms to ex-
tinguish a blaze. One night Maria Cassiea
twas smoking on the bed. All the women
smoked pipes constantly. She set the cur
tains on fire and would have been burned
to death had not Captain Ross put out
the flames.
1t was by accident that Captain Ross
discovered the child. He was on the roof
OF the rear extension of the fire house, the
wall of which forms a wall to the air
shaft, and CHANGED to look down. He
caught sight of the boy. As soon as the
child saw the captain he dived through a
window and disappeared.
Captain Ross wanted to make sure what
It all meant, so re watched the child by
stealth, as did some of his men.
Each morning sometimes at daylight,
sometimes later, the boy vas placed in the
air shaft. All through the day, in rain
or shine, he was there. Now and then his
mother threw him a crust Of bread, which
was his only food, and handed him cup
of water.
There was quilt. black and ragged. on
(which he could lie down. The uneven
naggiIg of this air shaft, nothing more
than a we'll ten feet square and twenty
feet deep, was always wet. The quit was
saturated with moisture.
All day long the child played In this dark,
wet hole. He tore pieces Of paste board
into crude limitations of boots, which he
sailed in the cracks of cellar door. He
went hungry that ne might make a paste
there were always little pools of water
in the fagging-with the board. He picked
the plaster between the bricks with a
stick and filled the places with the paste,
as he had seen sailors calk decks at sea-
When Captain Ross cav the child grow
thin and was certain that 1t was held a
prisoner he reported to Detective Schum-
mon. Of the West Twentieth street police
station He in turn notified Agent Fog
erty. and they set about securing evidence.
The raid was made yesterday. Maria
Cassiea, the mother. and three other wom-
en- were carried to the station house with |
tie boy.
The women were half naked and bed |
clothing was wrapped about them so that |
they couid be taken through the streets |
in a patroll wagon.
The women were sent to Blackwell's |
island for three months and the boy was |
committed 70 the Institution OF Nercy. at /
Madison avenue and Eighteenth street.