Philadelphia Times, 8/18/1881, p. 4

BOYS PADDLED AT THE LINCOLN HOME

Superintendent Hugg an Advocate of Whipping and Solitary Confinement – The Boy, Scott, Who Was so Punished, Entirely Cleared by a Comrade

An investigation is about to be held by a committee of the Grand Army of the Republic concerning the charge made against Chauncey Towne, an acting assistant in the Lincoln Institution for Soldiers’ Orphans, of having cruelly beaten and put in a cell one of the boys named Furner Y. Scott. Some circumstances attending the case and the attention it has attracted will, it is thought, compel a rigid overhauling of the present manner of treating the boys by officers and managers, who include some ladies and gentlemen occupying very prominent positions. A TIMES reporter ascertained some facts last night which throw a great deal of light upon what has happened. William M. Hugg, the superintendent, was away on his vacation when the affair occurred. Mr. Towne, although acting as an assistant is not really an officer of the institution. He is employed at the Post Office and overlooks the boys in the house ion consideration of his board. Young Scott, like all the other eightly-odd boys in the institution, works every day and his wages are a very fair equivalent for what he receives so that he has cultivated a manly feeling and was naturally more sensitive of an indignity than if he had been an idle dependent upon the bounty of others. He denied from the first that he had locked the dormitory door – the offense of which he was accused – but refused to tell who did simply because among the other boys it is considered mean and dishonorable for one to tell upon another. It was only a prank, he claims, a mere piece of boy mischief to begin with, and if it had happened to the superintendent, would probably have been passed by without any particular notice.

SCOTT ENTIRELY CLEARED

Last night while THE TIMES reporter was talking with Mr. Towne and the superintendent Robert Sterling as fine a looking boy as could be picked out anywhere entered the room with Scott, and, putting his hand in his breast and drawing out a key, said: “I can’t let this go any further, Mr. Hugg. I am the one who locked the door, and Scott had nothing to do with it. I alone am to blame.”

There were tears in both the boys’ eyes. From this confession it would appear that Scott had been struck, knocked down, beaten after the manner of a small child before the other boys and locked up in a dark cell without having committed the least offense. Mr. Towne made the point that the chastisement and imprisonment were not for locking the door, but for insolence on the part of Scott, and when pressed for details he said that the “insolence” and “impertinence” consisted in the little fellow saying, when Mr. Towne caught him by the neck, “Don’t choke me.” It should be said that, in justice to Mr. Towne, that Mr. Hugg, the superintendent, sanctions the course he took and Mr. Hugg in turn says he is backed by the managers. He says no one in authority can afford to let pass unnoticed any resentful remark made against him by one boy in the presence of the others. When asked if such a protest would not be natural to any one with another’s hand on his throat Mr. Hugg said: “It would be all right in a man, but could not be tolerated in a boy.” This theory was illustrated by the remark of one of the larger boys to the reporter that “Mr. Towne was afraid to touch them and struck Scott because he was the smallest boy.”

Regarding the iron-barred cell in the third story Mr. Hugg says it was made by order of the managers, to whom he reports every case of punishment. He says that the boys consider it as great a disgrace to be placed in it as if they were put in the penitentiary. It is called the “lock-up,” and has every appearance of a prison cell such as criminals are put in. It undoubtedly has a deterrent effect upon the boys, who dread the very mention of its name. Mr. Hugg believes in corporeal punishment, he says, and thinks that fear is the strongest deterrent influence. “Solderiers were punished when they didn’t do what they ought to, he said yesterday, “and why shouldn’t soldiers’ children?” He regrets very much that punishment is abolished from the public schools, and thinks it the worst thing that could have happened to the children.

PADDLE AND CELL

During the interview with the boy Scott and in presence of Mr. Hugg the little fellow described carefully all that occurred before and after Mr. Towne’s attack upon him. He said he had been placed in the cell once before, but only for a little while.
“How often have you been whipped?” he was asked.
“Whipped? How often? Let me see. Have I been whipped very often, Mr. Hugg?” he asked, looking nervously at the superintendent.
“No I have not whipped you very much,” said Mr. Hugg
Closer questioning brought out the fact that he had sometimes been spanked with the open hand, but oftener whipped with what he at first termed “a slipper,” but which proved to be the flexible sole and heel of a shoe or slipper. This “paddle,” as it has come to be called by the boys, seems to have been the usual instrument of castigation. Although no opportunity was found to question any of the other boys, an incident occurred which served to show how they feel. It became quickly noised about that a reporter was in the parlor investigating the case and when he came out with the superintendent the boys in the back part of the hall motioned to him, shaking their heads and pointing to the superintendent, making meantime the movement of whipping, seeming to say as plainly as if in words, “Don’t believe it; he gives it to us regularly.”

The cage, or dell, referred to was next seen by the reporter. It is built inside of an upper room in a third story and is about high enough for a tall man to enter. The sides and ceiling are constructed of several layers of thick timber securely clamped. The door is very heavy and there is a narrow aperture in the top, containing heavy iron bars, which is the only place where light is admitted. As very little light enters the room proper the cell, built in the room at its furthermost corner, is much darker than an ordinary prison cell. The interior is absolutely bare. There is no paper nor anything else on the walls and no carpet on the floor. An iron bedstead covered with a mattress and a pine chair are all the furniture. A formidable padlock on the outside of the door completes the dungeon.

It also transpired that the institution is run in a great measure by the Hugg family. Wm. M. Hugg is the superintendent; John T.M.C. Hugg is the assistant superintendent and Mrs. Wm. M. Hugg is the matron. There are over twenty females employed in the institution, all selected by the Huggs. Mr. Hugg, the superintendent, admitted that quite a number of boys had left the institution during the past year, but declined to say how many. He said there might have been 5 and there might have been 25. The institution last year derived nearly $12,000 from the receipt of wages of boys they have put to work and over $13,000 from the State for the support of that portion of the boys whose fathers were soldiers in the late war. As the average number of boys is about eighty the institution gets considerably over $300 a year for every boy, nearly one-half of it earned by the boys themselves.

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• Transcribed by HS 2024-08-28