Bridgeton pioneer., 1904-08-18
WOMAN GOES TO
THE PENITENTIARY.

Recently the Pioneer published
a clipping from Streator, ILL.,, paper
alleging that Oscar Hawn, Bridge
ton glassworker, and a woman who
posed as his wife, deserted their infant
baby to die. This occurred in Chi
cago. The woman has been appre-
hended and punished. The authorities
are after Hawn, who was recently in
this city.
The same Streator, ILL.,, paper on
August 9th published the following
story:
The woman who, when a resident of
Streator, posed as Mrs. Oscar Hawn,
wife of bottle blower, is now in the
House of Correction at Chicago, hav-
ing been sentenced to that institution
for one year yesterday by Judge Chet-
lain, who, in delivering the sentence,
took occasion to denounce the mother
in scathing terms for deserting her
child in Chicago about a month ago
The Examiner this morning con-
tains cuts Of Mrs. Hawn, the baby and
Judge Chetlain, together with the fol-
lowing article concerning the outcome
of the case
This woman is deserving absolutely
of no mercy. She has shown herself
to be heartless and, cruel. She not
only abandoned her own flesh and
blood, but left her baby to die on the
public streets Of Chicago and in the
darkness of the night. And all this
cruelty for the sole purpose of selfish
ness. After leaving the new born
babe to die, this woman herself goes
to a first class hotel, where she calmly
rests for the night-even her guilty
conscience and inhuman act failing to
disturb her slumbers Then she takes
a train and calmly leaves the city to
rejoin the miserable being who posed
as her husband while his own wife
and children he left to cruel fate.
What this woman really needs is
good hard manual labor, and a year
over washtub would, believe, tend
to elevate her morals. There is moth
ing SO good for uplifting degeneracy as
good, hard labor, and that punishment
one can hardly call it punishment
will have a most wholesome effect on
this defendant as we'll as other women
of her kind. I will sentence her to
one year in the House of Correction,
with the Recommendation that she be
given hard labor. Judge Chetlain's S
denunciation Of Florence Hawn, who
abandoned her babe.
George Eliot's "Hetty, portrayed
so faithfully in adam Bede," stood
before the bar of Judge Chetlains'
court yesterday in the person of beau
tiful, dark-eyed Florence Hawn, and
shrinkingly listened to these scathing
words
Like Hetty, Florence Hawn left her
baby to die.
More fortunate than Hetty, her
child lived.
Therefore her punishment, instead
of being transportation for life, as
was Hetty's, was one year at hard
labor in the House of Correction
The beautiful prisoner wept and
begged for mercy, but the judge was
inexorable.
At the moment she received her SEN
tence Florence Hawn learned that she
was not a wife as she believed herself
to be, but that the man at Streator,
Ill, whom she called husband, had
deserted a wife and two children in
New Jersey before he eloped with her.
With heartbroken cry the unhappy
woman tainted and was removed to
the county Jail in an unconscious con
dition.
The young woman is said to have
abandoned her infant by leaving it in
al feed box at Quincy and Jefferson
streets to starve or die from exposure.
The infant was found by the Des-
PLANES street police and cared for at
st. Vincent's Orphan Aylum. Then
Detectives Keough and Barry traced
the mother to Streator, Ill, where she
was arrested and returned to Chicago.
She made no denial of the charges
preferred against her, and the grand
jury promptly voted indictments. She
will enter upon her sentence at once.
oou
dorothy Belle Slips into Water.
Millville, N. j., Aug 13. The four
masted schooner Dorothy Belle, ("