The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1910-07-20

= Gertrude Monsen, who is dying
at Georgetown Hospital from pei
lagra, is one of the four white wo-
men who followed Rev. Jonah
Samuel Sturdivant, negro preach
er, to Washington just before he
was arrested for marrying and i'll
treating a pretty Norwegian i'm
migrant girl.
The Rev. Jonah was sent to jail
for three years in Baltimore late
in February. Since then his fol-
lowers have been expecting him to
escape through a miracle The
girl contracted pellagra by fasting
and scourging her body in the finn
belief that God would open the
prison doors for the negro prophet.
DYING IN HOSPITAL.
Hilda Johnston. the Norwegian girl
whom Sturdivant married before the
police could stop him. is at the point OF
death at Freedmen's Hospital, Thir-
teenth and " streets. She recently be-
came a mother.
This is the outline Of the pitifuI story
that Mrs NJ B. Graves. a mission
worker. of "a Grant street. unfoided into
the astonished ears OF Lieut. Boardman
at police headquarters yesterday. She
demanded that the police take steps to
break up the sect
While eminent physicians have been
studying the peIIagra case at George
town Hospital. and the news that the
mysterious disease was working into th=
North was being flashed over many
wires, none dreamed Of the sordid drama
that led UP to it.
Travelled from Norway.
The startling sidelights OF the case
came out through the arrival OF Miss
Olga Branton. who travelled from Nor
way at the request of the Johnston girls
family to take her back to her parents.
aged and prostrated with grief.
Miss Branton went 10 the home OF
Mrs. Graves and asked her help. The
two women quietly investigated They
found that Gertrude Monsen had been
living with Addie codding. another
white woman of the band. at the home
of Mother" Williams. an old and al
most destitute negro woman. at 11s6
Twentieth street.
Miss Monsen was taken from that house
to the hospital last week. Miss Codding
was still there last night, but the police
will take her away this morning and
she probably viii be sent to her rela-
tives in Boston
The two good samaritans also discov-
cred the whereabouts of Hilda Johnston.
They found her at the negro hospital yes
terday
When Hilda landed In New York lit
tie more than a year ago she was
wholesome Norwegian girl. blond and
comely. and full of bright hopes for her
future in the new land. She was a splen-
did type Of the woman that Northern Eu-
rope sends to America.
Duped by Rev. JONAH
Yesterday she lay in ward cot, wasted
and wan. The bloom was gone from her
cheeks, and she was just a pitiful shadow
of what she had been before she fell un-
der the strange spell of the Rev. Jonah
When she saw the face Of the woman
who had come across an ocean to rescue
her, and heard OF the tear-dlmned eyes
of her half-forgotten father and mother,
she cried out in frenzy Of agony, and
begged that she be allowed to die. Torn
between pitiful regrets and the fanau-
| cal fervor that stin fingers in her
shrunken breast. the girl turned her
face to the wall and would not be COM
forted by the motherly women who were
seeking 10 help her
! Mrs, Graves expects that the police
.sEslI allow the girlsto be taken back to
~ hat they will provide a
| home for the child IN some charitable
/ institution But at the hospital they do
not think she will live. and her deter
mination 10 die makes the fight of the
doctors for her life almost hopeless.
Same situation There.
In the meantime the physicians who are
trying to cure Miss Monsen of peIlagra
at Georgetown Hospital have TO cope
with the same situation. She IS younger
Continued on Page 5, Column 5.