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| Hudson Reformatory, Hudson, N. Y. |
Cortland Evening Standard, Tuesday, October 10, 1899.
GIRLS ON A RAMPAGE.
Inmates of the Hudson Reformatory Make Things Lively For a Time.
HUDSON, N. Y., Oct. 10.—When the governor appointed a new board of managers of the Hudson reformatory a few months ago, one of their first acts was the abolishment of all corporal punishment. Since the new system has been in force a number of outbreaks by the women inmates has occurred, but nothing in comparison to that which commenced Sunday about noon and continued for 24 hours. The girls had just returned from services in the chapel, when under the leadership of a Miss McCormick, about 60 broke ranks and commenced to smash and break everything in sight.
Their yells were like that of Indians. A few guards and matrons were powerless to subdue them. The spirit of riot was soon communicated to the rest of the cottage inmates and soon 300 yelling fiends were on the rampage. They tore down gas pipes, water pipes, wrapped electric wires from walls, smashed the fixtures, wrenching the plumbing apart, broke the tables and chairs, threw them through the windows carrying glass and sash with them, and resorted to every imaginable fiendishness. Their language was most disgraceful. They ran the hose cart to the hydrant, attached the hose and nearly drowned a matron who remonstrated.
These scenes lasted during the afternoon, when the Hudson police were sent for. The women faced the officers and the chief was forced to throw some of them through the door. Quiet was finally restored, but it was not to last long. Some of the officers had gone and after a few hours the riot again started. Securing broken pieces of furniture, with yells that were heard in the streets of Hudson, they again commenced to break everything in sight. They even pulled down the steam radiators and separated the pipes. They attacked the guards and knocked one of them down and trampled on him. The police were again sent for and it took several hours to line up the women. They at one time made a rush on the officers and Sergeant Cruise was forced to draw his revolver and point it at them before they would desist.
There were not cells enough to put all the prisoners in and all night and morning was rent with blaspheming.
Requisitions [were] made upon the state comptroller for 25 pair of handcuffs and these and all that could be borrowed from the Hudson officers and Sheriff Jassup are now on the hands of the girls. Five of the leaders are chained to the floor of cottage No. 6.
On application of the board of managers, Sheriff Jassup swore in 12 deputies to guard the grounds until further orders. A meeting of the managers has been announced for Friday.
The destruction done in the last outbreak will amount to about $600, making in all during the past four months an estimated amount of about $1,500 worth of property destroyed by unruly inmates.
When the riots started, Miss May, the superintendent demanded order, but was promptly told by a leader that the state board of charities had abolished corporal punishment and that they were not afraid of her.
THE NEW WOMEN.
Locked up but Shouted—Quelled by Threats.
ALBANY, Oct. 10.—In consequence of the insurrection among the inmates at the reformatory for women, Attorney General Davies went to Hudson last night. After a consultation with Governor Roosevelt and Comptroller Roberts, accompanied by District Attorney Dounce, he visited the institution. Although the refractory inmates had all been locked in their cells, their voices were not under restraint as yet and many of the girls had desisted from sheer exhaustion.
The attorney general reports that order is being restored in the reformatory and that all semblance of insubordination is fast dying out.
The sheriff and district attorney also made a tour of the institution and threatened the inmates with transportation to state's prison unless they ceased their violent actions at once. This threat had the desired effect and subsequently partial order was restored.
New York's Latest Murder Mystery.
NEW YORK, Oct. 10.—The mystery surrounding the mutilated body of the woman found in West Seventeenth street and in the North river on Saturday is still unsolved. Several men and women have positively identified the dismembered portions of the body which are still at the morgue, but so far these identifications have been without result and so far the parties making the identification have been mistaken. Police Captain Price is of the opinion that the authorities are confronted with a problem more difficult of solution than the Guldensuppe murder.
A SCOTT SCHOOL CASE.
Proceedings of Election Set Aside—New Election Ordered.
ALBANY, Oct. 10, (Special).—In the appeal of Wm. B. Stroper and others from the proceedings of the annual school-meeting held Aug. 1 last in school district. No. 6, town of Scott, Cortland Co., Superintendent of Public Instruction Chas. R. Skinner has ordered set aside and vacated all such proceedings relating to the election of a district clerk, a trustee and a collector of the district and the appropriation of $20, and authorizing the levy of a tax to collect the same, and when collected to pay the $20 to Wallace Pickett and Perrin Anthony. Ashbell T. Williamson, the trustee of the school district, is ordered by the superintendent to call a special meeting of the voters of the district as soon as possible to act on these matters.—C. N. A.
Science Club Meeting.
The Cortland Science club held a very interesting and profitable meeting Saturday evening in the Franklin Hatch library building. Major Aaron Sager, who has the finest private collection of shells in this section of the state, gave an instructive talk on conchology, which pleased the members very much. He illustrated it quite fully with specimens from his collection, and questions were freely asked and answered in the most informal way.
At the next meeting Prof. Booth will speak on a subject proceeding from work in the line of chemistry.
TWO MORE LETTERS
Received from Former Pastors of the Homer Congregational Church.
The two following letters from Rev. Dr. Holbrook and Rev. Dr. Robinson were read at the anniversary service of the Homer Congregational church on Sunday. They were crowded out yesterday from lack of time to get them in type.
LETTER FROM REV. J. C. HOLBROOK, D. D.
To the Members of the Congregational Church and Society of Homer N. Y.:
It gives me sincere pleasure to respond to the invitation sent me as one of your former pastors to write a letter of reminiscences to be read at the approaching centennial celebration of the formation of your ecclesiastical organization.
I recall the six years of my pastorate with you as one of the pleasantest periods of my ministerial life. I had become somewhat familiar with your history and circumstances through my nephew, Rev. T. K .Fessenden, once and for many years your respected and successful minister, and he very strongly urged me to accept your call to me as a pastor.
When that call came to me, therefore, it seemed to open an interesting and important field of usefulness. Your church and society was one of the largest and most important of any in the interior of the state, and it had a high reputation religiously and intellectually. I therefore gladly accepted your call to the pastorate; and well do I remember the warm welcome I received and the hearty co-operation I experienced in my labors. I shall never forget the hours I spent in the quiet study on Albany-st., where I prepared some of my most elaborate sermons and the earnest attention given to them on your part on their delivery.
Never in all my ministerial life have I had the good fortune to address more appreciative and stimulating audiences than those which faced me in your beautiful house of worship. The house was uniformly well filled, not only from the village, but by the long lines of hearers who regularly attended both from East Homer and from the dwellers on the Scott road, the Plank road and other outside localities, many coming from long distances, and in one case seven miles. As they came thronging to the place of worship, I was often reminded of old Dr. Watts' paraphrase of one of the Psalms:
How pleased and blest was I,
To hear the people cry,
Come let us seek our God to-day.
Yes, with a cheerful zeal,
We'll haste to Zion's hill,
And there our vows and honors pay.
Nor must I neglect to refer to one of the most remarkable peculiarities of the arrangements of the church, viz.: the weekly Thursday afternoon prayer-meeting. I have called this service a peculiarity, for I never knew its parallel elsewhere. The lecture room was uniformly well filled, not merely by village people, but there was seen the remarkable spectacle of the dwellers on the farms for miles in different directions suspending their work to gather for God's worship, with members of their families in mid-week and truly blessed were those seasons of worship, characterized by earnest prayers, and spiritual remarks on the part of the attendants, never was there occasion for the exhortation by the minister to those present to "improve the time," the period being after all too short to afford opportunity for all who desired to speak or pray. What pastor could fail to preach with spirituality with such a weekly stimulus or lack for topics of discourse? How vividly do I recall those scenes, and the faces of the many aged persons who were always present, and whose prayers and remarks I found so profitable to myself! Indeed, I confess I look forward with great pleasure to the time when we shall meet again in the heavenly world and together rejoice in the review of these scenes.
And what shall I say of the several seasons [sic] of revival which were experienced during my pastorate. I thank God always for the fact that I did not labor in vain or spend my strength for nought among you. One such season of refreshing from on high deserves special mention when, if I remember rightly, there were about one hundred conversions and one remarkable feature of the work was that so large a number of those who were brought to Christ were much advanced in life. It is not often that this is true of such seasons. There were many on that occasion who had long sat under the sound of the gospel, but had not yielded to its claims. It was touching in the extreme to see them, one after another, come bending humbly to the cross accepting the great salvation.
In conclusion let me congratulate you that you are permitted to enjoy such an occasion as the celebration of a century of existence as a church and society, and that you have so honorable a record of usefulness in the past. I deeply regret that age and distance prevent my attendance in person, but I assure you of my deep sympathy with you and of my earnest prayers that you may continue to be of equal service in the future, in the work of our great Master. Deeply imprinted on my memory are the scenes of my Homer pastorate and never can I forget the warm friends I found there. I could fill pages with the names of those with whom I was associated and whom I loved, and by whom I had reason to believe that I was loved in return, and whom I anticipate meeting again in a better world, by the grace of God.
I have thus mentioned a few of the many reminiscences that occur to me in this brief review of my association with you, and for others I may refer you to my recently published book entitled "Recollections of a Nonagenarian," pages 173 and 288, and especially page 174 in which I speak of the academy and its intellectual influence on the town, and of the number of prominent individuals among its alumni.
Trusting that you may have an interesting and successful celebration of your centennial, I am in my 91st year most sincerely yours,
JNO. C. HOLBROOK, Stockton, Cal., Sept. 22, 1899.
LETTER FROM REV. WILLIAM A. ROBINSON, D. D.
MIDDLETOWN, N. Y., Oct. 6, 1899.
To the Pastor and Congregation of the Homer Congregational Church:
DEAR FRIENDS—It is one of those disappointments which especially try patience and fortitude that I cannot consistently be with you upon the occasion of your one-hundredth anniversary of the organization of your historic First Religious Society of the town of Homer.
I can only express my sincere regrets, and send to you my heartfelt congratulations and cordial salutations. Others will doubtless portray the contrasts between the conditions existing in 1799 and those of this present time; they will probably sketch the salient points in the inspiring history of your society and church; they will draw from the significant past eloquent and cogent lessons for to-day, and hopeful and uplifting expectations for the future. You will not need me for any part of this grateful service. Your record, and the evident presence and blessing of God with you for the century you review, may sufficiently emphasize the worth and honor of the institutions you cherish. Identified as your church has been with the progress of God's kingdom, not only in this land but in other lands as well; working as it has not merely through the ordinary instrumentalities of church life, but also through the agencies of education and philanthropy; your society has helped to sustain institutions whose best memorial is the good they have wrought and the honor in which they are held far and near. It may be permitted to me as one serving you in the gospel for nearly twenty-one years, a longer period than that covered by any other pastorate, to express my deep and warm affection for you who know me personally, and my abiding interest in all that promotes the prosperity of the dear old church and society.
As you know I have given somewhat careful and thorough study to your history and to the individual characteristics and qualities of those early men and women who laid so well the foundations here of church and school and town. In this brief letter I may only sum up two or three clear suggestions from that history and that study of personalities: One of these is that men and women of those first years of your history were very real, very human, and very vigorous in their individuality. They were not cut and dried saints made to order after a conventional pattern. They had a good deal of human nature in them, and sometimes not a little of the "old Adam'' drops out in their words and deeds. But while I for one love them a great deal better for their original and genuine human quality, beyond all dispute they were thorough, sincere, and faithful in their devotion to all that they esteemed of worth for the home, the church, and the community. They had their peculiarities, and every one of them was real man or woman, and not an imitation article; yet they were noble in their purpose, their ideals, and their self-sacrifice. They may well teach us to be true each to his own individuality, and yet to be fraternal, generous, and unselfish in our service to God in our day and generation. The best saints are not painted ones, but real everyday men and women, with the love of God in their hearts, and their lives showing out his truth and beauty and glory from the original and unique facets of multiform personality.
Another suggestion which comes from the thoughtful review of the hundred years gone by emphasizes the readiness with which the men and women whom we honor have co-operated for the support and vigor of these institutions. As I have said, they were people of strong individuality. Not seldom this took the form of pronounced preferences and even assertive will. At no important epoch in the history of this society have its members softly settled together, like dough put in a pan. It has been rather the intelligent and fraternal union of those who for the sake of the common good, and to obtain a better realization of a worthy ideal, have waived personal preferences or prejudices and joined hands heartily in large hearted devotion to the great ends sought.
The man who has no opinion of his own doesn't amount to much. But he who sets up his opinion as the standard of the universe is a bigot and a nuisance. The influential men and women who have made possible the honorable record of this society for the past hundred years have been no weaklings and no bigots. They have been broad enough and big enough to hold self in abeyance, and to work and give for the support of institutions which have blessed their own time and the years that followed, and which still perpetuate the [honor] of their breadth and nobleness. May this spirit of the fathers still characterize and inspire you and those who come after you!
There comes also to my thought as I review your history as a society, the suggestion of the mighty stimulus thus given to your proper pride and intelligent interest in these institutions. Homer has a history! It also has a present and must have a future. How the thought of your history as a society must stir your hearts and quicken your best purposes! We laugh about "wearing the grandfather's hat," but it is worth while to have had a grandfather who had a head to wear a hat, and a heart that beat responsive to high appeals and holy inspirations. I congratulate you that you have a worthy pride in your past, and may find in it an incentive for your present duty, and a pledge of God's readiness to lead in all the future. Big-headed pride is silly and contemptible; but big hearted pride [insures] to one's best, and makes the noblest ideals full of meaning and attraction. Beloved, though I cannot be present with you in your celebration, I reach out the hand fraternal and loving in spirit to clasp yours on this occasion; and my prayer is that upon you, pastor and people, may descend and abide heavens richest blessings and benedictions. Very sincerely and cordially,
Your friend and brother WM. A. ROBINSON.
VILLAGE TRUSTEES.
Action on Groton-ave. Paving Petition Deferred Until Wednesday Evening.
The board of village trustees held a regular meeting last evening, but action on the Groton-ave. paving petition was not acted upon, as the search in the county clerk's office to verify the titles of ownership represented by the petitioners had not been completed. Former Village Trustee E. J. Warfield was in attendance and urged immediate and favorable action so that the sewer can be laid this fall. President Holden reported that Mrs. Laura E. Stearns, whose name appears on the petition, desired that it be stricken from the paper on the ground that she did not sign it herself nor authorize any one else to affix her signature. The board took no action, holding that the name either on or off would not affect the validity of the petition as the majority represented was so large in the matter of feet frontage.
At the request of Chief Barber, the appropriation of $50 was ordered paid to each of the companies, Orris and Excelsior Hook & Ladder Co.
The board also at Chief Barber's request voted to request people who desire to remove trees to notify in advance the superintendent of the fire alarm system so that he can arrange for the protection of wires and system from damage.
Main-st. paving bonds, owned by the Farmers' and Mechanics' Savings bank of Lockport, which were due, were retired and paid as follows: Series B, principal $2,220.91, interest $592.24; series A, principal $797.12, interest $474.60.
Adjournment was taken until Wednesday evening.
BREVITIES.
—The Ladies' Literary club meets tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 o'clock with Mrs. D. J. Apgar, 21 Tompkins-st.
—A regular convocation of Cortland Chapter, No. 194, R. A. M., will be held Wednesday evening. The M. M. degree will be conferred.
—New display advertisements to-day are—Opera House, "Next Door", page 5; Opera House, "What Happened to Smith,'' page 5; A. S. Burgess, Clothing, page 8; C. F. Brown, Drugs, page 8; M. A. Case, Drygoods, page 6.
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