Taught Daughters To Rob, Is Charge

1920

Mother of Girls, 8 and 10, Is Alleged "Fagin"

Children Arrested for Shoplifting

INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana — Indianapolis' most unusual shoplifting case came to light with the arrest of Mrs. Bella Goldfarb, 38, and the detention of her two oldest children, Minnie, 10, and Lillie, 8.

Mrs. Goldfarb is charged with child neglect, while the two little girls are confined in the juvenile home.

The woman was taken into custody after Minnie and Lillie were arrested in Pettis Dry Goods store. When questioned by woman Police Sergeant Clara Burnside and operatives of the Quigley-Hyland detective bureau, it is claimed they said their mother whipped them if they failed to bring home loot after a visit to the stores.

Police Find Stolen Goods

Investigation of the Goldfarb home, the detectives and Sergeant Burnside claim, reveals many articles supposed to have been taken from downtown stores.

Operatives of the Quigley-Hyland bureau picked up the two little girls in the Pettis store. After questioning, their case proved so interesting that Detective Martin Hyland visited the Goldfarb home with his operatives. The children then denied that their mother whipped them when they failed to bring home articles.

When they were found each child carried a bag. The children were taken in charge when Minnie, it is alleged, placed in her bag a piece of ribbon she had taken from a counter. In the bag were other articles. Lillie's bag contained a cap valued at $4,75 which, it is charged, was taken from the Pettis store, and a number of small dresses said to have come from another store.

At the home it is claimed there were many articles said to have been taken from different establishments. A number of pieces of silverware and boudoir caps were among these articles.

Mother Made Girls Thieves

Mrs. Goldfarb was not arrested at that time because she has three other small children. She was ordered to appear at police headquarters. When Sergeant Burnside brought the two children before her they again admitted that they were instructed to steal.

"Mamma whips us if we don't bring home something," one of them is alleged to have said.

Mrs. Goldfarb will appear in juvenile court soon. No charges have been preferred against the children, Sergeant Burnside being loath to arrest them because of their tender years.

Mrs. Goldfarb said her husband works as a shoemaker in Dayton, Ohio. She said he sent her from $20 to $30 weekly.

Advantages of the Spanking Machine

1905

"I see," said the mother of five, "that out in Peoria, Ill., they've invented a machine for spanking children. She cast a meaning glance at her son Willie, who shifted uneasily in his chair, but said nothing.

"I was thinking," she went on, speaking to no one in particular, "that I would send on to the inventor and get one of the machines. It would come in handy for me, and I could rent it out among some neighbors I know and make money on it. That is, of course, if I didn't use it all the time, which I might." Willie squirmed again, and thanked his stars the machine wasn't there yet. His mother went on.

"I s'pose they have various sized hands for the machine, to be used in accordance with the gravity of the spankee's offense and the spanking area presented to the spanker. For instance, for such offenses as hanging to the tall end of ice carts, about a No. 2 hand, with spikes in it would do. For riding up in the dumbwaiter and scaring the life out of the cook so that she gives notice, a No. 9 hand, with explosive torpedoes in the palm, wouldn't be any too big or heavy. If the machine works with a crank, as I imagine it does, the rapidity of the stroke could be regulated, too, and the severity of the punishment thus graded according to what the young man ought to have coming to him. "Of course, I'm merely talking from hearsay, now, but I think one of those machines on every street corner would be a good thing. They could build a little booth around it and charge admission. Then when a small boy, out with his mother, insisted on running across a crowded street ahead of her, and giving her heart disease by nearly getting run over by cars and automobiles, she could just lead him into the corner spankorium and attend to him good and plentiful. I think the city ought to know about this and provide such places.

"It would be a great machine to act as a deterrent. If a boy was bad you could say to him: 'Be good, now, or I will put papa's hand with the cast-iron fingers on it into the spanker and turn it loose on you.' That would do some good, and I don't think the small boy would think it a bluff either."

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, Dec. 2, 1905, p. 7.

Bridegroom of 13 Spanked by Dad

March 1914

KINGSTON, Ontario. — "Well, father, permit me to introduce my bride," said Eugene Lovelace, a romantic youth of thirteen, as he presented a blushing eighteen-year-old girl, who was Miss Laura Richardson.

"Your what?" gasped the astonished parent, as he looked from one to the other.

"My bride, pop. We've come for the paternal blessing."

The bridegroom has a hazy recollection of what followed. He has a distinct remembrance of father's No. 9 shoe, still containing father's foot connecting with remarkable force somewhere amidships. He remembers getting a fleeting glimpse of a big flat hand coming in his general direction. He is in too much pain to try to recollect other incidents.

The bridegroom does not look any older than his age, and at the time of his decision to embark upon the gale-swept seas of matrimony he purchased with the bulk of his available funds the first pair of long trousers he had ever worn.

Mrs. Lovelace looks and acts much younger than most young women of eighteen do, and was won quickly by the romantic Eugene when he decided to settle down in a home of his own.

First Money Mark Twain Earned

1906

Marshall P. Wilder, in his book entitled The Sunny Side of the Street, says that he once asked Mark Twain if he could remember the first money he had ever earned.

"Yes," replied the famous humorist, "it was at school. There was a rule in our school that any boy marring his desk either with pencil or knife, would he chastised publicly before the whole school or pay a fine of $5.

"One day I had to tell my father that I had broken the rule, and had to pay a fine or take a public whipping, and he said:

" 'Sam, it would be too bad to have the name of Clemens disgraced before the whole school, so I'll pay the fine. But I don't want you to lose anything, so come upstairs.'

"I went upstairs with father and came down again feeling a tender spot with one hand and $5 in the other, and decided that as I had been punished once and got used to it, I wouldn't mind taking the other licking at school. So I did, and I kept the $5."

'Spanking Machine' Reforms a Village

1920

Both Adults and Youngsters "Undergo Treatment" -- and They Don't Come Back!

BRIDGETON, N. J. -- "Schoolboys here don't know that the 'spanking machine' in the back room of the city hall is a barrel stave with a handle carved on it," says Mayor Arthur C. Whitaker.

"It has been very successful since I established it about six years ago. I should say that between fifty and eighty boys and several adults have successfully undergone treatment. And I have never noticed anybody who has tried it once hurrying back for more."

He explained that he had laid in the staves with the idea that many boys might be propelled by them along the path of rectitude who might otherwise go to the State reformatory and from there to a life of crime.

Is Satisfied With Results

"I am entirely satisfied with the results," he said recently. "I personally know of several boys who have been started on the road to useful careers largely through its use. As a preventive of truancy, petty stealing -- that might lead to more serious offenses -- I can recommend it highly.

"Teachers in school obtain order immediately when they ask bad boys if they want to go over to the back room of the city hall and meet the 'spanking machine.' Parents have come to us and asked us to use it on their children."

The mayor said he never worked the "machine" himself, but that either Romaine Kincaid, truant officer, or one of the "husky" policemen did it.

First "Spanker" Proud of Job

"Our first 'spanker' was old Captain Woodruff," the mayor said. "He was mighty proud of the job, too, until he retired from the police force.

"Of course, no boy -- no minor -- ever is spanked without the consent of parent or guardian. Sometimes permission is hard to get, but when it is made clear that the alternative will be worse for the culprit, the difficulty ends."

--The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 27, 1920, page 2.