He then repeated his former statement and wound up with a fresh appeal to be done justly by; which seemed in his mind to mean that his statement alone should be given to the public. But he was told that Mrs. Gibson’s story would be published as well as his own, whereupon another sister, who had just arrived on the scene, pronounced Mrs. Gibson a liar, and added her solicitations to have that part of the history suspended.
On a subsequent visit, the sister who had represented herself as only a neighbor, repeated the statements that been previously made by her and her brother with a few more variations and contradictions. For instance she remarked that the papers said John was a boy of eight years old when he was first put in the cage, or little room, “Now that is false, for he was between twenty-three and twenty-four when he went insane.” On the previous day she had said that he went crazy when he was trying to get into the High School.
TRYING TO GET GIBSON AWAY.
On June 16th, Alderman Kerr gave one of the sisters, Mary Ann Hurtt, who resides at 707 Girard Avenue, a hearing on the charge of tampering with the witness, Mrs. Gibson’s son.
Mr. Thomas J. Gibson, Jr., residing at 337 Lombard Street, testified that Mrs. Hurtt came to his house and asked him whether he could not drop that case and get out of the way, so as not to testify, saying that if he would she would pay him back all the rent he had paid her for the place he was occupying, and would make him a handsome present besides that.
The whole statement was most vehemently denied by the accused, who, however, was held in five hundred dollars bail to answer the charge at court. Her brother Joseph entered the required security.
THE VICTIM REMOVED TO THE ALMSHOUSE.
As soon as Alderman Kerr made the requisite order to that effect, the poor imbecile who had been shut up in his cage for so long a time was placed in a carriage and taken promptly to Blockley Almshouse.
The attendants and officials who received him aver that in all their experience they have never seen such a heart-rending sight as was John Herriges when brought to the institution. And this, it will be recollected, was after the poor wretch had been submitted to the partial cleansing that his relatives gave him immediately after the visit paid them by Mrs. Gibson in relation to the captive.
At once, upon his arrival at the hospital of the almshouse, he was stripped of the slight filthy salt-bag petticoat, and his body submitted to a thorough but careful scrubbing, after which the flesh was, with equal care, rubbed until the natural color of the skin began to make its appearance through the deep stain of accumulated filth of so many years.