SPIRITUAL ADVISER OF FAMOUS CRIMINALS.
WORK OF "MOTHER" WHEATON IN PRISONS ALL OVER THE LAND.
For twenty years Mrs. Wheaton has been traveling throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Mexico, working among prisoners in hundreds of prisons and penitentiaries. On a number of occasions she has converted criminals under death sentence. She has preached in the Maryland Penitentiary.
Mrs. Wheaton came to Baltimore direct from Ohio, where she had been holding prayer in the cells of the state prison with eight men condemned to die. She was in San Francisco a number of years ago when Alexander Goldenson killed his sweetheart, Mamie Kelly, and after Goldenson had been tried, convicted and sentenced to death "Mother" Wheaton prayed with him for forty days. The day of the execution, September 14, 1888, he was converted through her instrumentality, and just before walking to the gallows she tied her silk handkerchief about the condemned man's neck.
IS NOT A STRANGER.
OLD-TIMERS AT COUNTY JAIL GREET MRS. WHEATON AS LONG-TIME FRIEND.
Mrs. Elizabeth R. Wheaton, of Tabor, Ia., famous in this and other countries as a worker among the inmates of jails and penitentiaries, yesterday morning went to the county jail and prayed and sang hymns with the prisoners in the tanks.
Although her time was very much circumscribed, Mrs. Wheaton shook hands with most of the prisoners, many of whom had heard of her, and some of whom had met her in other prisons. John King, awaiting his transportation to Walla Walla, and one of the most admittedly professional criminals in the jail, stated that he had met "Mother Wheaton" several times before, both at Salem and at Walla Walla.
Both he and J. H. Le Roy, another old-timer, had many anecdotes to tell of her kindnesses in past years.—Paper of August 9, 1905.
The above sketch was accompanied by a cut from protograph taken by the reporter and a nicely finished photograph presented me. From this photograph the cut was made that is inserted at the beginning of this chapter.—E. R. W.