On April 10, 1874, a little girl appeared before Justice Abraham R. Lawrence in the New York County Supreme Court. Jacob Riis, the famous journalist, was in the courtroom that day. He wrote: “I was in a court-room full of men with pale, stern looks. I saw a child brought in on a horse blanket at the sight of which men wept aloud, and I heard the story of little Mary Ellen told that stirred the soul of a city and roused the conscience of a world that had forgotten, and as I looked, I knew I was where the first chapter of children’s rights was being written.”[1]
My name is Mary Ellen McCormack. I don’t know how old I am. … I have never had but one pair of shoes, but can’t recollect when that was. I have had no shoes or stockings on this winter.… I have never had on a particle of flannel. My bed at night is only a piece of carpet, stretched on the floor underneath a window, and I sleep in my little undergarment, with a quilt over me. I am never allowed to play with any children or have any company whatever. Mamma has been in the habit of whipping and beating me almost every day. She used to whip me with a twisted whip, a raw hide. The whip always left black and blue marks on my body. I have now on my head two black and blue marks which were made by mamma with the whip, and a cut on the left side of my forehead which was made by a pair of scissors in mamma’s hand. She struck me with the scissors and cut me. I have no recollection of ever having been kissed, and have never been kissed by mamma. I have never been taken on my mamma’s lap, or caressed or petted. I never dared to speak to anybody, because if I did I would get whipped. … Whenever mamma went out I was locked up in the bedroom. … I have no recollection of ever being in the street in my life.[2]
In 1874, there were no prescribed legal means by which a child could be saved from an abusive home, but the crusading efforts of several prominent citizens, together with Mary Ellen’s heart-wrenching testimony, put a human face on child abuse and changed the legal system’s view of children’s rights.
Mary Ellen’s mother, Frances Connor, came to the United States from England in 1858 and took a job as a hotel laundress. In April 1862, she married Thomas Wilson, an Irishman who worked in the hotel kitchen shucking oysters. Mary Ellen was born in 1864, the same year that Thomas Wilson, serving in the Union Army, was killed in battle. Frances Wilson, forced to return to work, gave Mary Ellen to the care of a woman for two dollars a week. When Frances lost her job and stopped visiting or paying for Mary Ellen’s care, the child was turned over to the City’s Department of Charities and housed on Blackwell’s Island where reportedly two-thirds of abandoned children died before reaching maturity. A couple named Thomas and Mary McCormack, who had lost all three of their own children to illness, decided to adopt Mary Ellen. Shortly thereafter, Thomas McCormack died and his widow married Francis Connolly. For the next several years, Mary Ellen was the victim of frequent and severe beatings at the hands of Mary Connolly.
In 1873, Etta Angell Wheeler, a Methodist social worker serving in the City’s poorest neighborhoods heard disturbing reports of a child suffering severe abuse in a Hell’s Kitchen tenement. She decided to investigate and was shocked by the sight of a “pale, thin child, bare-foot,” the size of a five year-old, wearing a tattered scanty dress in bitterly cold weather and showing the marks of physical abuse across her “meager arms and legs.” [3]
Wheeler went to the police who said they could not act without a court order. And though charitable organizations were willing to care for the child there were no available legal mechanisms to obtain custody or guardianship of Mary Ellen. In a cruel irony, there were laws on the books authorizing action to prevent cruelty to animals but none that authorized intervention to rescue a child from abuse in a private home. Wheeler decided to approach Henry Bergh, the famous rescuer of mistreated horses on the streets of New York City and founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.[4] Bergh told Wheeler: “Very definite testimony is needed to warrant interference between a child and those claiming guardianship. Will you not send me a written statement that, at my leisure, I may judge the weight of the evidence and may also have time to consider if this society should interfere? I promise to consider the case carefully.” Upon receiving a detailed statement from Wheeler, he wrote to his lawyer, Elbridge T. Gerry (link to bio): “No time is to be lost. Instruct me how to proceed.”[5]
On April 9, 1874, Bergh and Gerry appeared before Judge Lawrence in New York County Supreme Court and presented a petition on behalf of Mary Ellen. The petition relied on a little-known statute, Section 65 of the Habeas Corpus Act, which stated: “Whenever it shall appear by satisfactory proof that any one is held in illegal confinement or custody, and that there is good reason to believe that he will … suffer some irreparable injury, before he can be relieved by the issuing of a habeas corpus or certiorari, any court or officer authorized to issue such writs, may issue a warrant … [and] bring him before such court or officer, to be dealt with according to law.”
The petition was supported by extensive testimony alleging that Mary Ellen was being held illegally by the Connollys and was suffering from extreme deprivation. The lawyers alleged that Mary Ellen would suffer irreparable harm unless a warrant was issued removing her from her home and placing her in protective custody. Judge Lawrence issued the warrant as requested. Gerry was hailed by the press for his innovative use of the habeas corpus statute to create a new legal means by which the authorities could intervene to remove an abused child from her home.
On that same day, April 9, 1874, Mary Ellen was taken from her home to appear in the courtroom where she gave her famous statement. While court records in the case appear to have been destroyed by fire, extensive press coverage has enabled scholars to reconstruct the legal proceedings. Following Mary Ellen’s initial testimony, Mary Connolly was indicted on five different counts of assault and Mary Ellen again testified against her in court. She was convicted after a jury trial and sentenced to one year of hard labor in the city penitentiary or the Tombs.[6]
Mary Ellen meanwhile was placed in a home for older girls administered by the City’s Department of Charities and Correction. Unfortunately, this meant that the young girl would live alongside many delinquent adolescents. Etta Wheeler objected to Mary Ellen’s placement and lobbied Judge Lawrence and Henry Bergh to place the girl under Wheeler’s own care. Wheeler then arranged for Mary Ellen to be raised by Wheeler’s mother and sister outside of Rochester. Mary Ellen married a widower when she was 24 and they had two children, one of whom was named Etta. In addition to adopting a third child with her husband, Mary Ellen helped raise the three children from his first marriage. She died in 1956, aged 92.[7]
In December 1874, Henry Bergh and Elbridge Gerry led the way in founding the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC), the first organization of its kind in America. Funded in great part by philanthropists its mission was to rescue children from cruelty, neglect and abandonment. The SPCC took on a legal role as a friend of the court focused on intervening to save endangered children. In its first year, the SPCC investigated over 300 suspected child abuse cases, but its work was not universally welcomed. Many were suspicious of governmental intrusion into private lives and homes. In response to a proposed “Act to Prevent and Punish Wrongs to Children” spearheaded by Elbridge Gerry which eventually became law in 1876, The New York World warned that Bergh would be empowered to “break into the garrets of the poor and carry off their children upon the suspicion of spanking.”[8]
Over time, the SPCC broadened its mission to pursue legislative reform to prevent neglect, abandonment and economic exploitation of children, including passage of laws prohibiting child labor and creation of New York’s first Children’s Court in 1901.[9] By the close of the 19th century, the SPCC’s concept of child welfare had become an embedded part of the American legal system and replicated across the country.
[1] Marian Eide, “The First Chapter of Children’s Rights,” American Heritage, Vol 41, Issue 1, July/Aug. 1990.
[2] “Mr. Bergh Enlarging his Sphere of Usefulness: Inhuman Treatment of a Little Waif – Her Treatment – A Mystery to be Cleared Up,” New York Times, Apr. 10, 1874
[3] Eide, supra.
[4] Howard Markel, M.D., “Case Shined First Light on Abuse of Children,” New York Times, Dec. 14, 2009.
[5] Eide, supra.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Genevieve Carlton, “Mary Ellen Wilson and the 19th-Century Child Abuse Case That Changed History,” allthatsinteresting.com, Dec. 15, 2022.
[9] http://www.nyspcc.org/nyspcc/history/the_story/