“I mean my husband and his wife,” she replied. “They did not seem to look upon me as a wife at all, and even in the coldest mornings, and immediately after my child was born, they used to make me get up first and light fires and prepare breakfast and begin work generally, and I was only too glad if I escaped with a little fault-finding. I stood it as long as I could, because Brother Brigham had counselled me to do so; but now I have left them again, and do not mean to return.” This was the story of one poor girl’s troubles.
Now the man, Elder Jos. Bull, who did this is a good Mormon, in good standing in the Church to-day. He is employed by the authorities, and his poor young wife is now working for the Gentiles—a much happier woman, if her face speaks truly, since her separation, although she has to support herself and child. She, like hundreds of other young girls, came to Utah without friend or relative, and this is how a good brother “took care” of her.
But I must be permitted to relate a still more painful story—the story of a poor innocent girl allured from her happy home in England by one of the most distinguished of the Mormon Apostles; brought over by him to Utah as his wife, and there suffered to die in misery and neglect.
The Apostle Orson Pratt, who is called among the Saints “The Champion of Polygamy”—a man who has devoted his life to Mormonism, and whose writings have done more than the labours of all the other Apostles to win converts to Polygamy; a man who on more than one occasion has boldly stood up against many of the absurdities and blasphemies of Brigham Young; a man upon whom, on account of his independence, Brigham has frowned, and who has consequently never attained to the wealth of his more obsequious brethren; a man who in all the ordinary affairs of life would command the respect of every one around him. This was the man who perpetrated the atrocious villainy which I am about to relate; and much against my own personal inclinations I feel compelled to tell the story, as it shows how shockingly this debasing system can pervert an otherwise upright mind.
Orson Pratt married the young girl of whom I speak in Liverpool, by special dispensation from Brigham Young; and her parents—themselves devout Mormons—thought that their daughter was highly honoured in becoming the wife of an Apostle. She was very pretty and attractive, and for a time he paid great attention to her, and brought her over to Utah as his bride. Arrived there, he utterly neglected her, and she experienced all the horrors of polygamic life.
The Apostle was living in Salt Lake City. He had left his young wife and her children in Tooele—a place about forty miles distant. There they lived in a wretched little log-cabin, the young mother supporting her little ones as best she could. When her last child was born, she was suffering all the miseries of poverty, dependent entirely upon the charity of her neighbours. At the time when most she needed the gentle sympathy of her husband’s love, that husband never came to see her.
One morning there was literally nothing in the house for herself and her children, who, knowing nothing of their mother’s sufferings, cried to her for bread.
The poor mother quieted them with a promise that they should soon have something to eat, and then she went and begged a few potatoes from a neighbour; and upon these they subsisted for three days. She then took her children with her, for they were too young to be left alone—her babe was only three weeks old—and she went round to see if she could get work of any kind to do. In this she was not successful; and at length, worn out by continual anxiety and privation, and heart-broken by the neglect which she had experienced, she sank beneath a fever which promised very soon to prove fatal.
For some time the neighbours nursed her; but they, of course, had their own families to attend to, and could not give her quite all their time, and thus occasionally she was left alone. One evening, when such was the case, she got up in a state of delirium, and barefooted, and almost destitute of clothing, took her children, and wandered forth with them into the snow. The good people of Tooele went out over the prairie, anxious to find and bring back the poor maniac, but for a long time their search was in vain. At last, not knowing whither she went, she wandered to the house of Brother Eli B. Kelsey—a “vile apostate” as Brigham Young would call him; but known to every one else, Saint, Apostate, or Gentile, as one of the best and kindest-hearted men that ever lived. In Brother Kelsey’s house she and her little ones were kindly received by him and his good wife, and their wants attended to. They were clothed and fed, and were then carried back to the log-cabin which they called their home.
Next day the Mormon Bishop of Tooele assembled the people, and money was collected and sent to Salt Lake City, to Orson Pratt, begging him to come immediately, if he wished to see his wife alive. But the Apostle did not come. At that time he was actually engaged in taking another bride, and he wanted to hear nothing of his dying wife.