Fremont Journal

From the Philadelphia Bulletin, Feb. 14th.

Horrid Cruelty to a Child by its Father and Mother—Unparalleled Barbarity.

A case was heard before Judges Thompson and Allison this morning, on habeas corpus which stands without a parallel in the annals of cruelty. The case we are about to relate proves that even the maternal feeling can be lost or stifled, and that cold and calculating cruelty may usurp their place.
From the testimony before the court, it appeared that O. B. Hammer and wife the parents of a sprightly little boy of about six years of age, named Charles John Hammer. He was born out of wedlock, and at the age of a few months was abandoned by his parents and placed in the almshouse. From this institution he was taken by a family in Berks county, total strangers to the child, and kept until last Christmas. The parents of the little boy married a short time after his birth, but made no attempt to reclaim their offspring until a few weeks ago, when they obtained him from the family who had thus far nurtured and supported him.
As soon as the parents obtained his custody, a systematic course of torture was commenced which makes every feeling of humanity shudder within our nature. He was starved to such a degree, although his parents were in easy circumstances, that he picked up the crumbs of bread and the seeds from pies that fell upon the floor while the girls who worked or Mrs. Hammer were eating their dinners.
He would eat the hard crusts found in the yard, and when spoken to about it, would reply that he was so hungry that he could eat anything. He was whipped so unmercifully that black stripes as thick as a woman's fore finger were all over his body."
For an accident that will sometimes happen to children, he was taken into a shed, stripped naked in the coldest weather of the season. and soused with cold water from a hydrant, until he was almost perishing, and then whipped severely and put behind the stove, wrapped up in a sheet for hours. His mother struck him over the head with a lap-board with such force as to raise a lump as large as a walnut. His father took him out of bed while asleep, and flogged him severely with a shoe, as the mother told one of the witnesses, for five minutes. The child's cries were heard by the witnesses and his artless appeals, "Oh! father, don't whip me any more and I will be a good boy." were totally disregarded
His mother would take him by the head. spin him around like a top. —until he became giddy, then permit him to fall with his head against the wall, and strike him first on one side of the face and then on the other for crying. This same mother has put him out of doors in the severest weather, but thinly clad, and compelled him to stay in the yard for an hour and a half at a time, until he became so cold as to be unable to walk. She would threaten to beat him to death for calling her mother, and would frequently knock him down.
But the greatest torture, and that which aroused the indignant feelings of the young ladies who worked for Mrs. Hammer, was the resort of that mother to hot irons, with which she seared and burnt the flesh of her child.
According to the testimony, Mrs. Hammer. picked up a flat-iron, and said, "come here. Johnny, till I iron you out!" The child replied, "Oh! no, mother, it will burn me."
She then placed the iron first against one cheek and then the other, put it against his little hands, ran it up and down his legs, and concluded by opening his pantaloons, and holding it against his naked flesh until it burnt the skin off. In this condition he was found when taken out of their possession by a good Samaritan named Mary Ann Lewis, a woman of middle age, who had heard of the parents' cruelty, and took measures to relieve the child from their barbarity.
Mrs. Lewis stated to the court that after she heard of the child's tortures she could not sleep at night, and felt it to be her duty to rescue him. The court decided that as the child had been so cruelly treated by its parents they had no longer any right to its custody. The father and mother were ordered to prison. Mrs Lewis volunteered to take of the child and raise it. The members of the bar present immediately took up a subscription among themselves, which they deposited in the little boy's jacket pocket, and he left the court room with his foster mother, happy in his new found friend.