But Bertha escaped from the asylum, which has for its safeguards the lock and the steel bar. Locks and bars are nothing to "Fainting Bertha"! She was recaptured and returned, only that she might escape again on Christmas night, finding her way to Peoria, where her escapades in going through the town were marvels to the Peoria police. The conductor on the Peoria train from whom she took $30 has not claimed his money. But half a dozen stores in which she operated and the salesman from whose samples in the Fey Hotel she took hundreds of dollars worth of silks, jewelry, clothing and perfumes got back some of the plunder, which detectives found piled around her in a chair car in an Omaha train.
The Peoria police locked her up, and while the charges rested Dr. Zeller, of the asylum for the incurable insane at South Bartonville, asked of Dr. Podstata and the penitentiary authorities the custody of "Fainting Bertha." Warden Murphy at Joliet was delighted at the idea. Supt. Podstata at Elgin was as greatly pleased. Dr. Zeller at South Bartonville Asylum for the Incurable Insane, receiving the young woman, was conscious of having a unique addition to the 1,929 other inmates of his barless cottages of detention. In the history of the South Bartonville asylum only one female inmate has escaped, and she was found dead soon afterwards in a ravine into which she had fallen.
Pale Blue Color Scheme of Bertha's Ward.
"If Bertha escapes here it will be the test of vigilance as opposed to locks and steel bars," is the summing up of the situation by Dr. Zeller. Bertha is not wholly satisfied where she is. The food is not all she desires. She refers to her ward and its environment as "the dump." Yet her particular "dump" is decorated in pale blue—part of the color scheme of the asylum management,—the color scheme of her ward being adapted to her particular temperamental degree of insanity. But while Bertha has been gnawing diamonds from tie pins, one of her fraternity in ward classification has a record of gnawing the woodwork from at least a dozen other insane wards in as many institutions for the insane.
How subtly conscious of her position "Fainting Bertha" may be on occasion was demonstrated the other day when it was arranged with Dr. Zeller that she should go with two nurses and the staff member in Peoria in order that her picture might be taken in a local gallery.
Delighted at Chance of Going to Town.
With $9 to her credit in the asylum's system of personal accounts, Bertha wanted some of this sum for "shopping," but when it was refused she accepted the situation without particular protest. The idea of going uptown, five miles from South Bartonville, was delightful. Her spirits rose high at the idea, and when her nurses had brought her over to the administration building she dropped into the office chair occupied by Dr. Zeller, and in mock seriousness turned to the little group, asking what she could do for them.
On the Pekin and Peoria electric road she was banked in next the window by her escorts, and was the pink of propriety until Peoria was reached, save as occasionally she turned backward toward the conductor and smiled. And invariably the conductor smiled in return!
"Honey" was her designation of Nurse Quick. "I'm a perfect lady, ain't I, Honey?" she repeated a score of times on the trip. In the photographer's gallery the snap of the camera shutter brought a start from the object of the lens, and the first picture in six years, save as the police authority of the state had insisted that she pose for it.