Daily Tobacco Leaf Chronicle

ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY
Three Naked Children Found Locked in a Cold Room Without Food.

NEW YORK, Feb. 22.—Dr. Schultz, of the Presbyterian hospital staff, made an astounding discovery in an East Side tenement Friday night. He had been called to the tenement, 356 East Ninety-eighth street, to attend a young girl who had been severely beaten by her father. His prospective patient lived on the fifth floor, and while the doctor was passing through the hallway on that floor he heard moaning. The sounds seemed to issue from a room next to that to which he was going.

After attending to the injured girl, the doctor investigated the matter. He burst open the door from which the sounds came, and a pitiful sight met his gaze. Leaning against a stove, which had apparently been innocent of fire for many days, he saw a babe not more than ten months old, without a stitch of clothing upon its emaciated body. Its eyes were half closed, and it was moaning with pain. A few feet away another naked child, a boy less than two years of age, lay on the floor unconscious. Crouched in a corner, not far from the hall door, was a negro boy about eight years old, devoid of clothing, like his companions in misery and close by his side, as if to keep the warmth in his wretched body, was a large mastiff, who feebly wagged his tail as the doctor entered.

The surgeon questioned the negro, the only one of the children old enough to talk, but the little fellow was so weak that he could hardly gasp out a dozen words. From what he did say, however, was learned that the three children and the dog had been locked up without food since Monday night. The boy said that a man had taken them to the room where they were found, stripped them of all their clothing and locked the door upon them.

The children were turned over to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which will investigate the matter. The whole affair is shrouded in mystery, as the tenants of the house in which the children were found say they know nothing of the case and were not aware that the children were in the room where they were found. The white children found, from their appearance, seemed to be of Italian parentage.