... I am letting you know I am back in the same place—institution. I’m letting you know why and I wrote you letter about my head and I like to get rid of that. Doctor told me that he [saw] no other help, that I got to have an operate on my nose. If not then I get a inflamation thro my nose. So I wrote that to my friend, that one what we was together locked up, but I didn’t tell her that I got this sickness, but I wrote to her in English that I got disease, but I didn’t know that she gave the letter to her lady and they sent them to the institution. So they read that I getting disease that I stole $4 and one young man gave me $2, so they make me very dirty, but I’m not afraid of them—you know that, when they start with such a story, so I know that I’m in heaven. They only want have me back. I should stay here the three years, so they come and get me on Sunday, afternoon. So how I was, I went. They didn’t give me only chance to put on my dress, shoes and hat and put me in a auto and so that was we took the train to the institution and there they start to ask me questions, why they took me back and when I come down here. I got to let them examine myself and when she examine me, she said everything is all right. You know what a disease is—so explain to her about my head and my nose. So she said if girl say she have a disease, they take it that its girl bad from a man, but I didn’t know that a girl get sickness from a man. The lady doctor told me about how the girl get sick.... But where is the right? And on account of the $4, that this way: That girl is a Croation and I’m a Czech, and we used to write, and sometimes we didn’t understand the letters from each other. And so about the $2. Once in N. Y. I went down from car, I lost heel from shoe, I dropped the hand bag, and so real man come out and pick up my bag [and gave me $2.00].
[Letter to Superintendent of institution from parole officer; June 4, 1915, after Esther had been returned to the institution]:
... It is very difficult to tell from the letters [of Esther] whether or not she has actually broken her parole. The worst she has done, according to her own statement, is (1) to borrow $4 from employer’s purse to pay for a dress with fullest intention of returning it (and employer is sure she would have missed it had it not been returned); (2) opened a letter addressed to employer from writer; (3) went to picture shows sometimes when she was supposed to be in class; (4) flirted with men on train; (5) wrote T. T. whom she knew before coming to the Institution; (6) kissed the egg man; (7) probably had sexual relations with a man in Philadelphia for $2 (Esther denies this).
Her letters refer also to plans to go to a dance secretly and to go to New York secretly. There is nothing in the letters to indicate that she ever put her plan about coming to New York into effect. Esther denies emphatically that she has been to New York and her employer thinks it very unlikely that she could go without her knowledge. They show also she thought she was diseased and had been to a doctor about it before she came to the institution. She still worries about it whether or not there is any cause. (First blood test was S—— G——.)
Subject’s attitude expressed in these letters is far more serious to my mind than anything she has done, but it is a question whether it is anything for which she should be blamed or punished. She is unquestionably abnormally sensitive, suspicious and secretive and these traits have been unfortunately emphasized by her arrest and commitment here. She evidently suffers bitterly and constantly because she is on parole to the institution and that resentment poisons everything she does and thinks. She must have been under a frightful strain during these months while she was working with the lawyer to win her freedom, with the constant pressure he put on her for money and to come to New York to see him. Then too the conflict of what may be merely normal and natural sex interests and her fear of breaking her parole by expressing these in any way has probably been bad for her and has emphasized these sex interests. I think all of the references in the letters to “nice young mens” who smiled at her and tipped their hats to her on the train, to the nice young mens she sees at picture shows, to the men who invited her to a dance, may be explained as a boastful desire to appear bad and to be having attention and a good time, arising from a regretful realization of how much she is missing in these lines. Possibly she was just beginning to have a taste of “gay life” before she came to us and the institution may have done much to whet her curiosity. She seems to ridicule the idea of being considered “innocent and good”—“Sunday School girls”—and asks co-defendant to send her the picture of her (Esther’s) Bohemian sweetheart (she has always claimed to be engaged to a man now fighting in the Austrian army) so she can show her employer she has a sweetheart, “make her employer jealous” as she puts it.
Certainly if she had not been determined to keep her parole, with such a demand on her for money from the lawyer and such an interest in men, she would have solicited long before this. I think it is to her credit that she has worked so steadily and satisfactorily and has tried to keep, as she understood it, the letter at least of her parole.
I feel, however, that if the interest we have taken in her in giving her an early parole under such good conditions and her employer’s never failing efforts to understand and help her have not won her confidence, we can scarcely hope to break down her attitude of misunderstanding and suspicion of us, which breeds deceit in her so readily. After what has happened she will probably be more antagonistic than before; the strain on her of keeping parole might easily become too great at any time. It would seem to be a very great risk both for us and for Esther to have her out on parole again, particularly in another state.
I hope you will be able to make her see, even if you decide she has not actually broken her parole, that she has not even understood its spirit when she tried to buy her freedom through a lawyer and deceived us and her employers as to her real intentions.
I think much of subject’s suspiciousness and deceitfulness is racial and there is small chance of her adjusting to American customs. I remember that you considered deporting her in the first place and while I still think it would be very bad for subject to have the stigma of deportation added to that of arrest, I do feel that her own country is the best place for her and that she will be far more apt to live a straight, normal life there with the restraints of her family and their standards to help her than she will here. Do you think it may be possible to send her back on her own money when conditions of war permit?
From certain standpoints this girl seems to be almost ideal human material. The institution called her “intelligent, conscientious, and, far beyond our girls, sensitive to fine distinctions of right and wrong.” All her wishes are strong and social. She craves pleasure, association with “nice young mens”, dancing, pretty clothes, but is an industrious worker. Her letters to Lilian are overflowing with the desire for response—both to give it and to receive it. In a letter after her return to the institution, not printed here, she refers to the child of her former employer: “Oh, I was glad to hear about Max. How often I think about the times he used to pull my hair, and that was a great joke. Yes, I often think and talk about him. Give him my love and see if any of my flowers are up. If so, put one on him for me.” And she is always thinking of improving her position in the world. “We are,” she says, “going to look for some nice man, but something better, not only working men.” She is ashamed of her relation to the egg man, “because he is only egg man.” She does not want it known that she pawned a dress. In her reference to Austrian army officers and a sweetheart in Bohemia, she wishes to claim before her mistress that she has some social standing. During the whole of her parole she is working on the problem of her life. She is working alone, and she leaves no stone unturned. She is in a village, not allowed to visit New York. She plans her campaign for a new trial by letter, working through a stupid friend who unintentionally betrays her. Her lawyer is exploiting her, her doctor also; her Italian friend is not loyal, her uncle promises help but is poor. She even appeals to the garbage man. Like many who have sought to reconstruct a broken life, she plans to go west.