THE WAUPACA REPUBLICAN

May 16, 1906

 

RESTORED TO FRIENDS

 

Strange Case of Little Elsie May Kao.  From 1895 to 1906. 

From the Age of 6 years to 18 an Inmate of the Industrial School and

Home for Feeble Minded and not Eligible for any Defect. 

Back to Light and Joy with Friends.

 

            There’s something out of joint sometimes with social conditions and many times innocence is made to suffer because of the conditions.  Overt twenty years ago a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Warren Shingler, married a man by the name of Geo. Kao.  Two children were born to them a son and daughter.  The mother died when the children were small, the grandparents caring for them awhile.  The father apparently abandoned all care for them going away and never returning, and it is not known where he is now.  The boy was placed in the care of a farmer and we learn is an honest and industrious young man and lives near Ogdensburg.

            For some reason we cannot learn why, perhaps for lack of worldly means to support the child, little Elsie May at the age of six or seven years was, on application of its grandparents to Judge Hatch, committed to the industrial school for girls at Milwaukee in 1895.  In 1898 the State Board of Control sitting as a committee, voted to and did transfer the girl from the Milwaukee institution to the home of the feeble minded at Chippewa Falls, where we learn she has been employed in the kitchen, but at the same time she has received some educational training as is stated she plays the violin and cornet well.  But time works changes.

            The girl is no longer a little waif.  She is a young lady and she is not feeble minded or eligible to an industrial school or any state institution and the relatives know it.  An uncle E. J. Foster, engineer on the Wis. Central and his wife who is an own aunt of the girl, of Fond du Lac and other members of the family including the girl’s brother applied at the State Institution to have her restored, Mr. and Mrs. Foster desiring her as a member of their family.  But they found that the law’s “red tape” was the only way of restoration.  The matter was put in Lawyer F. F. Wheeler’s hands, he looked up the case and found the charge and commitment faulty in sending the child to the Milwaukee institution as well as the transfer from them to the home for the feeble minded at Chippewa Falls, as it is alleged that no record was filed to show that physicians had ever passed upon the mental condition of the little girl.  When Mr. Wheeler went to the Chippewa institution and called for the girl last week, the Supt. said “No Sir – can’t have the girl.”  Mr. Wheeler said he would at once institute habeas corpus proceedings, and when he produced affidavits to show past facts in the case to the proper tribunal at Chippewa Falls, Elsie May Kao was soon on her way to Waupaca.  At present she is with her grandmother, Mrs. Shingler, who is matron at Rusk Hall at the Home, but next week we learn will commence her new life with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Foster in Fond du Lac.