Waterbury Democrat., 1901-06-05
PAUPERIzE JOE PHILLIPS.
Law and Charity land him in the Cath

l ollie protectory.
 Magistrate Pool committed Joe Phil 1 lips, aged 15, to the Catholic Protectory
 Monday afternoon in New York, and
 when Joe heard his sentence he broke down and cried for the second time since he was put under arrest by the Gerry society for supporting himself and his two small sisters, when with his father dead and his mother in jail l under long sentence for drunkenness, there was nobody else but Joe left to take care of the family. The first time Joe cried was when he bade
 goodbye to the little sisters aged and
 years respectively, after tue magis- trate had committed them to the care of the Sisters of the Dominican Con vent of Our Lady of the Rosary. Yesterday Joe shed tears on his own l account Ever since the Gerry society got him into its clutches he has had a
 pretty dismal time of it, and when as the continuation of it all he heard that l he had to go to an institution which for all he knew might be some kind of
 prison at hard labor he gave way to tears. All that hae gets, 1t seems, as a
 reward for Il record struggle to take care of himself and two little ones de- pending upon hima struggle too that
 was a roaring success--for neither Joe l nor his little brood had wanted for a
 thing from the time he became the Wage-earner, nurse, cook and general family proyider-is q sentence which
 carries stigma with it which Joe Phillips, so far as the record shows, has done nothing to deserve.
 To make boy open to committal to the Catholic Protectory he must be
 either vicious, a paupar, or homeless, and Joe was none. of these until the
 Gerry society got hold of him. He is
 about as far from being vicious as it. is possible to be. He was not pauper because he supported himself and sis. ters by honest toiL ; Nor was lie home
 less, for he paid his rent with a regu-
 larity which the landlady bore witness
 had never been squalled when his
 mother was the head of the family. l Charity bureaucratic charity was | what did the business for Joe in the first instance and then there was ad- ded a dash Of religious supervision,
 and that settled it. Joe has to go up to the Protectory for an indefinite term. Where the religious feature came in was in reference to the faith of q
 wealthy family which wanted to take
 Joe in and care of him. This is the family of Dr H. c. Coee of West Seyenty-sixth street. pr Coe went to the Gerry society last Saturday and got Joe.
 Joe went up to the fine Seventy sixth street house to stay over Sunday
 and to see how he liked it. In addi- tion to this house Dr Coe has country home down on Long Island, where he proposed to take Joe and where he said Joe should have, among other things, a bicycle to ride. Besides this, Mrs Coe was to give Joe lessons in different branches of study. All that was asked of him was that he run errands and do light tasks, for which he was to have liberal salary every week, and the salary Mrs Coe was going to put in the bank for him. It all seemed very pleasing to Joe.
 until after he had paid visit 10 his
 sisters I'D at the Convent of Our Lady of the Rosary on Sunday. When he came back he did not care to stay with Dr Coe. Dr Coe is q Protestant and Joe was baptized q Catholic. And Joe did not want to go to Dr Coe when he
 appeared in court yesterday. Magis-
 trate Pool remarked that some infiu-
 ence had been exercised on the boy.
 There was present in the court, be-
 sides the representative of the Coe
 family, a Mir F. II. Pugnet, who
 brought with him q letter from MT
 Thomas NJ. Mulry, president of the St
 Vincent de Paul society, which has q number of clubhouses for boys through
 out the city, to one of which Club No
 3 of G9 West Washington Square-Joe
 had belonged. Mir Pugner, who is a
 silk weaver living ih Hoboken, offered
 to take Joe to his own home and take good care of him. MT Pugnet said fur thermore that the society of St Vincent
 de Paul would take charge of Joe in
 case the magistrate so preferred, and
 would send him to the mission of the
 Immaculate Conception at ? Lafayette
 place and look after his welfare gen.
 erally.
 Magistrate Pools mind, however,
 was apparently made up after the fail-
 ure of the Coe application and he or uefeu lllaL Joe De ldhtH tO tHe IdIuOIlc protectory.
 What Joe himself wanted to do was to go back to the blind man, for whom he was working when the Gerry socie- ty swooped down upon him. Mir Zeis is this gentlemans name and he paid Joe $3 a week for leading him around to various business houses with which he had transactions. He offered to put Joe ill a good Catholic family to board and not only to pay him for guiding him about but to get hiM employment in business house as sooh as q good opening came.
 But it was all of no avail. MagIs- trate Pool did not approve of Joe lead- ing blind man about the streets, so Joe was marched off weeping and pro- testing, to join the juvenile colony of Tho fhnIif snrQt pcfpry32