Orme - Hazel -
Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal Friday 28 Feb 1902
The Indianapolis News has discovered a terrible case of inhumanity in that city, a twelve year old daughter of John Orme, formerly of this city, being the victim.
It appears that Orme, who was married in Darlington, where he lived after leaving this city, had let his daughter go out to work in a family by the name of Martineck. The News last Thursday says of the case:
“Interest is increasing in the case of little Hazel Orme, the alleged victim of cruel and inhuman treatment by Mr. and Mrs. William Martineck, and the officers are being urged by persons in all parts of the city not to leave a stone unturned that will bring the guilty ones to justice.
In a plain, but comfortably furnished home at 426 South West Street, lies a little bundle of humanity, in the person of Hazel Orme, twelve years old, whose wide open and bright blue eyes will perhaps close forever in a few days. The condition of the child is said to be due to ill treatment, starvation and exposure. Hazel’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Orme, are said to have been kept in ignorance of the facts until a week ago. The matter was referred to the police department, and Humane Officer Joyce said it was the most flagrant case of inhuman treatment that he has had to deal with. Hazel lies on a cot, happy to be at home with her parents, but occasionally when asleep, she screams out in terror, and pleads pitifully not to be beaten.
Mrs. Orme said Hazel was allowed to go to the home of Martineck about a year ago, upon his promise that the child would received the same treatment accorded his own children. They saw her only occasionally, and she made no complaints. Hazel was a healthy child, weighing about eighty five pounds, when she went to the Martineck home, and now weighs less than twenty five pounds. Hearing that their daughter was not receiving proper treatment, Orme sent his sister, Miss Orme, after the child. Miss Orme did not know Hazel when she saw her, and it was several minutes, she said before she could be convinced that the little, delicate body was that of her niece.
After she was taken home, the child told of having been beaten in a terrible manner. Her back now shows great welts and bruised places. There are also several scars about her head and body. The child’s fingers are worn nearly to the bone. She said this was caused by constant work with a washboard. The child declares that she has had little to eat except bread and water during her stay at the Martineck home and that much of her work was done in the open air with insufficient clothing.
He said the neighbors near the Martineck home testified that they had heard the child scream time after time, and that they had seen her washing in the bitter cold, often holding her hands in the air in anguish because of her worn fingers. The child told Joyce that she was afraid to make complaint to her parents for fear of being beaten or killed. Dr. Rhodes, who was called in the case, said the child had developed consumption as the result of exposure and that she could live but a short time.
The child has occasional sinking spells, and her death is expected any time. The bruises and sores on her little wasted body cause her intense suffering, but she bears up bravely and believes that she will get well.
When she was asked where she slept while in the Martineck home, Hazel said a pallet, made of two old coats and a quilt, was placed on two chairs and on this she was required to sleep. The scars and bruises on her back, she said, were made by Martineck who whipped her with a razor strop, one end of which was metal. The child said she was not permitted to eat with the members of the family, and that during her stay at the Martineck home she had little but bread and water to eat. A bad scalp wound, she said, was made by one of the Martineck children with a butcher knife.
Martineck denied the charges of abusing the child. He said she first came to his home to play with his children, and afterward, by permission of her parents, she was employed by Martineck to look after his baby. For this service, Martineck said, he gave her 50 cents a week, and he afterward reduced the amount to 30 cents.
Persons from all over the city are visiting the Orme home to see the child, many of them riding to the house in buggies and carriages. Flowers, fruits, and candies have been sent to her in abundance. It became necessary yesterday afternoon to prevent any more visitors, except those concerned in the case, from seeing the child.”
Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal Friday, 7 March 1902
The Hazel Orme case was again in the police court today, when John and Belle Orme, the parents of the child, were tried on the charge of criminally neglecting her. Mr. and Mrs. Martineck, of 708 Blake Street, who were tried last week on the charge of treating Hazel inhumanly, were present. Little evidence was introduced against the Ormes, and, after the testimony for the defense was heard, Judge Stubbs postponed final judgment in both the Orme and Martineck cases until tomorrow morning.
The condition of Hazel Orme is not so favorable today and there is apprehension that she will die. In such an event it is probable that the cases against the Martinecks will again be taken up and a more serious charge preferred against them.
The terrible treatment to which the child is said to have been subjected was emphasized in a statement made by Prosecutor Collins, that he had a witness, Mrs. Haley, who had seen Hazel, while at Martineck’s house, picking scraps from a garbage barrel and eating them. For some unknown reason the witness failed to appear and patrolmen sent to bring her into court reported that she could not be found. Collins said he wished to introduce Mrs. Haley’s testimony to show that Hazel was criminally neglected by her parents.
By W. A. Joyce, the officer of the board of children’s guardians, the prosecuting attorney expects to show that the parents neglected the child. Joyce did not know of any ill treatment she had received at the hands of her parents.
About forty witnesses were summoned by the Ormes, all of them neighbors at the time the Orme family lived at Church Street. It was while living there that Hazel went to the Martinecks. All of them testified that they were on intimate terms with the Ormes and that they had never seen the child abused in any way. They said Hazel was provided for as well as the circumstances of John Orme would permit. Playmates of Hazel were also called and they testified that she was always well dressed. Several of the witnesses said Hazel seemed bright except in school. She was playful and well liked by the other children in the neighborhood. They said she was a large healthy child during her residence at Church Street.—Indianapolis News
Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal Friday, 14 March 1902
Mr. and Mrs. John Orme and Mr. and Mrs. William Martineck were each fined $50 and sentenced to the work house for thirty days as a result of their trial and convictions for inhumanity toward little Hazel Orme at Indianapolis.
After listening to the evidence introduced, and to the arguments of the attorneys, Judge Stubbs began to speak. He was visibly affected and a number of times during his discourse the tears ran down his cheeks. Among other things he said: “The evidence of Mrs. Haley as to seeing the child eat from a garbage can goes to show Hazel’s condition of hunger. Testimony of importance bears out the evidence of Dr. Morrison that starvation is responsible for the child’s condition. It is not necessary to go over the evidence against the Martinecks as to cruelty. Mr. Martineck was seen to strike the child with a strap or some other instrument, and there is direct evidence that Mrs. Martineck also whipped the little girl. The stories that Hazel was heard crying at all hours of the night are too distressing to be recalled.”
Judge Stubbs stopped at this and looked for a minute or more and Mr. and Mrs. Martineck, who sat on one of the prisoners’ benches. Then, so overcome that he could hardly speak, he continued: “It is distressing to punish parents who have little children of their own to look after. May heaven be merciful to you that your children will never be treated as Hazel Orme.” Quivering with emotion he turned his attention to Mr. and Mrs. Orme, who sat at another bench opposite the Martinecks. “It seems to me that this child has been denied the love and care of a father and mother. You might as well have turned her out in the streets as to have given her into the care of persons who have proved to be little better than savages. All the time there were only a few blocks between your home and the Martineck home, yet both of you only saw your daughter a few times in eleven months. You should have seen her. There is no excuse for ignorance as to the condition of the child. Miss Anna Orme saw her Christmas Eve in an emaciated, half starved condition, ill and heartsick at her treatment, yet the child was not sent for until Feb. 18. How you can excuse yourselves, I am unable to say. I have already made arrangement for Hazel to be taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital, or to the Eleanor Hospital, where she will receive the best of treatment, where kind nurses will watch over the child and bring the bloom back to her cheeks. There will be no charge to the family.”
Source: Crawfordsville Weekly Journal Friday, 23 May 1902
If Dr. William B. Fletcher, the well known specialist in nervous and mental diseases is right, the reports of the cruelty to little Hazel Orme were grossly exaggerated and the parents and the Martinecks were unjustly accused and punished. At least there is another side to the case, and Dr. Fletcher has given it in an article on “Mental Diseases of Children,” which has just appeared in the Medical and Surgical Monitor. He says: “An instance of feeble mindedness was well illustrated in the case of Hazel Orme, a child whose history shows an arrest of development at about five years—she is now fourteen years old. Her parents were either unable to keep her, or so avaricious that they hired the girl out as a baby attendant and dishwasher for 30 cents a week. Such children continued to think and act like children at the age at which the mind ceased to grow. The result was the girl required constant watching and her word was not considered of any more value than that of a naturally stupid child five years old.
The parents of Hazel Orme and the parties who employed her had once been neighbors but had removed some distance apart since employing her. Hazel’s peculiarities soon attracted the women gossips of the neighborhood, and the poor girl was actually ‘pumped’ by them regarding her employers’ (Mr. and Mrs. Martineck) household affairs. Now, it was proven in court that the Martinecks were absolutely honest and temperate people, who were evidently surrounded by a very bad lot, and, therefore, inclined to ‘not be neighborly.’
So to make a long story short, the neighbors soon had it spread abroad that the child was beaten and abused and once had been seen to take something from the garbage can and eat it. The child became ill about this time and after much persuasion the parents were induced to take her home. Then the newspapers took the matter up and for about two weeks public excitement ran rampant. Carriages with liveried drivers stopped at the door and silk and ribbons fluttered in the cottage. People came in the cars or walked by hundreds. Fruit, candies, and flowers filled the room of Hazel Orme. Fond mothers petted her and old fools wept over her. But one thing all one had to hear was the child answer the same question. ‘Did they starve you, Hazel?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did they whip you and make you work?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did they make you sleep in the kitchen?’ ‘Yes.’
The Martinecks were arrested. There was a popular cry to hang, burn, or destroy them: then the law was allowed to take its course, and after a prolonged trial in the police court, the employer of Hazel was fined and imprisoned.
I examined Hazel Orme twice. Upon my first visit she was quite feverish, bowels tympana, tongue red, pulse 130; various scars over forehead which her mother says were from falls; various macula between shoulder blades which had been called stripes from a ‘strap,’ but which clearly were not.
I interrogated the child at length and found she did not know her own age (which is fourteen). She could not count beyond three. She had never been to school, did not know a letter of the alphabet. She answered the following questions: ‘Did they (no name mentioned) you?’ ‘Yes.’ Did they burn your eyes out with a hot iron?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did you take all your meals from the slop pan?’ ‘Yes.’ Did they feed you good things?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did they treat you kindly?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How old are you, Hazel?’ ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Why did you not go to school?’ ‘Don’t know, etc.
Now I heard persons on the witness stand swear that this ‘little girl,’ who is approaching womanhood, was a bright, truthful, intelligent child. Yet see what mischief did arise—and more might have arisen—from the sickly sentimentality of an over emotional community.
I have personally known of the imprisonment of one man for several years in the penitentiary and one Negro burned at the stake in Georgia and heard of many others, upon the evidence and testimony (aided by designing or over emotional neighbors), of such mentally affected children as we see in Hazel Orme. Who cares for the poor girl now that sensationalism is taken out of her life? She probably has resumed her former occupation of carrying the growler between the saloon and her father’s house. But the saloon keeper has not been punished for selling to minors nor have the parents been fined or imprisoned for selling the labor of this feeble minded child.”