| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See http://www.archive.org/details/herrigeshorrorin00phil |
THE
HERRIGES HORROR
IN PHILADELPHIA.
A FULL HISTORY OF THE WHOLE AFFAIR.
A MAN KEPT IN A DARK CAGE LIKE A WILD
BEAST FOR TWENTY YEARS,
AS ALLEGED,
IN HIS OWN MOTHER’S AND BROTHER’S HOUSE.
The Most Fiendish Cruelty of the Century.
ILLUSTRATED WITH RELIABLE ENGRAVINGS,
DRAWN SPECIALLY FOR THIS WORK.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by C. W. ALEXANDER,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court in and for the Eastern District of
Pennsylvania.
THE HERRIGES HORROR.
| “Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands morn.” |
Every now and then the world is startled with an event of a like characterto the one which has just aroused in the city of Philadelphia the utmostexcitement, and which came near producing a scene of riot and evenbloodshed.
John Herriges is the name of the victim, and for an indefinite period offrom ten to twenty years has been confined in a little cagelike room andkept in a condition far worse than the wild animals of a menagerie.
What adds an additional phase of horror to the case of this unfortunatecreature is the fact that he was thus confined in the same house with hisown brother and mother. To our minds this is the most abhorrent feature ofthe whole affair.
We can imagine how a stranger, or an uncle, or an aunt possessed with thedemon of avarice could deliberately imprison the heir to a coveted estatein some out of the way room or loft of a large building where the victimwould be so far removed from sight and sound as to prevent his groans andtears being heard or seen. But how a brother and, Merciful Heaven, amother could live in a shanty of a house year after year with a brother,and son shut up and in the condition in which the officers of the lawfound poor John Herriges, is more than we can account for by any process[Pg 4]of reasoning. It only shows what perverted human nature is capable of.
THE HOUSE OF HORROR.
The house in which lived the Herriges family is a little two storied framebuilding or more properly shanty, rickety and poverty stricken in itsappearance, more resembling the abodes of the denizens of Baker streetslums than the home of persons of real wealth as it really is. It standson the northeast corner of Fourth and Lombard streets, in Philadelphia.
Immediately to the north of it is an extensive soap boiling establishment,while directly adjoining it in the east are some frame shanties stillsmaller and more del