Thursday, August 8, 2019

To Save Money, Gates County Had Carpenter Saw Off Poor House Inmate's Legs, Aug. 8, 1919

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Aug. 8, 1919. Inflation was 14.5% in 1919. (By comparison, it was 2.44% in 2018.) The $5 a month to feed a person is the same as $72.57 in 2018, adjusted for inflation. And the $5 paid to saw off Nelson Doughty’s legs also is equivalent to $72.57 in 2018 dollars. The inmate is termed an "idiot," which in 1919 was a medical classification and the term used to describe someone who was mentally impaired.

Surgery and Politics as Practiced in Gates County. . . Almshouse Keeper Cuts Off Legs of a Negro With a Hand Saw and Butcher Knife. . . County Commissioners Pay Him $5 for Job

For economical political administration, North Carolinians are referred to the county of Gates. In that county a Board of County Commissioners wouldn’t think of such a thing as employing a surgeon to amputate the legs of an inmate in the County Home who stood in need of such an operation.

Gates, they let a jackleg carpenter do the job with a butcher knife and a handsaw and pay him $5 for the job, thereby saving the county a surgical bill of $45 to $95.

In the Superior Court of Gates county last week a grand jury found a bill of indictment against A.s. Walker, keeper of the County Home. The indictment says Walker “did assault one Nelson Doughty with a knife and saw and did inflict upon him serious bodily harm.” The same grand jury brought bills of indictment against S.I. Harrell, for 17 years Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Gates County and against the other members of the Board of Commissioners for negligence in the administration of the County Home. Incitements were found not only against the new board, but against the old board whose term of office expired last December. The cases are to be tried at the December 1919 term of the Superior Court of Gates County.

A rumor of this unusual case having come to this newspaper, I went to Gatesville, the county seat of Gates this week to ascertain the true facts. The facts as I found them are as horrible as the alleged German outrages practiced upon the Belgians in the early days of the world war.

Used a Jack Knife First

Nelson Doughty, an idiotic Negro inmate of the Gates County Home, had both feet to freeze in the severe winter of 1917-18. His feet were frozen in December, due to the neglect of the keeper of the Home and the scanty bed clothing furnished by the County Commissioners. This poor, helpless Negro was then permitted to suffer for more than three months without surgical aid.

Some time in April 1918 his feet grew so offensive that A.S. Walker, keeper of the Home, took a jackknife and severed the feet, cutting them off at the ankle bone. He had seen pigs’ feet taken off in much the same way and thought he could make a good job of it.

But this operation didn’t suffice. The flesh of the angles of the Negro became gangrenous and began to fall off, leaving the unsightly bones exposed. Warm weather came on and by the first of June the stench form the rotten flesh and bone again became offensive to Keeper Walker.

This time the Keeper armed himself with a butcher knife and a handsaw and tackled the job anew. He sawed the bones off about six inches below the knees. The operation was such a “success” in the eyes of the Keeper that he put in a bill for $5 to the Board of County Commissioners, and the Commissioners paid his bill on August 5, 1918.

While at Gates Court House I looked up the minutes of the August 1918 meeting of the Board of Commissioners of Gates County. Among other items I found that $34.46 had been ordered paid to A.S. Walker, Keeper of the County Home, for “Board for 5 inmates, Mdse., &c.”

The Register of Deeds of the county, Mr. Thos. Hoffler, a courteous and efficient gentleman, promptly obtained for me the itemized bill covering “Board for 56 inmates, Mdse., &c.”
The “&c.” on that bill was itemized. And the item was this:

“To cutting off Nelson Doughty’s legs $5.”

I promptly set that bill up in the sunlight and took a photograph if it with my Graflex camera. A document like that may mysteriously disappear. I was determined not to let it get away from me.
And this then is the “assault” on one Nelson Doughty for which a Gates county Grand Jury indicted A.S. Walker, Keeper of the County Home of that county.

And Doughty Still Lives

I inquired the way to the County Home and found it behind a skirt of woods a mile or more from the Court House. There I saw Nelson Doughty, who is still living, in spite of his horrible experience. He crawled out into the sunlight and posed while I photographed him. He begged me to take him away from the Home and told me he was hungry.

I found no one else at the County Home. I was told there were two other inmates, but I saw nothing of them about the place. A.S. Walker, the Keeper, has an interest in a store in the village, Turner & Walker Co. He stays at the store all day and part of the night. His only daughter, a sweet little girl of 14 or 15 summers runs the County Home and looks out for the inmates as best she can. The child evidently doesn’t like the job, because I am told she spends much of her time in the village.

I looked about that County Home. It is the worst kept place of its kind I have ever seen. The hog pens on farms which I visited near Gatesville and Sunbury were cleaner than the room occupied by Nelson Doughty.

A former keeper of the County Home told me there were nine inmates in the Home when he gave it up to A.S. Walker in December 1917. I am told that four or five of the number have died from malnutrition, neglect or starvation and one or two have gotten away somehow.

The County Commissioners of Gates County allow the Keeper of the County Home $5 per month per inmate for board. He is supposed to board the inmates on that sum and make a profit on the transaction. It would be interesting to know what sort of provender the inmates get on $5 a month. One can’t board a mule for anything like that sum as present prices of food.

Mr. “Dolly” Walker

I wanted to see this man Walker who sawed off Nelson Doughty’s legs and collected $5 for it. I found him at his store in the village of Gatesville. He said he had heard about The Independent and he dropped everything to talk to me. He said he wanted to go back to “the first of it.” And I let him go back as far as he liked. He told about the severe winter of December 1917. The Negro Doughty was at that time suffering from bad feet. His feet had been burned early in life and could not stand exposure to cold. Walker says that one morning in December of January he found the boy’s feet “dead.” He says he told the physician to the County Home about it and asked him to attend to the case. He says the physician didn’t show up and after several weeks he spoke to him about it again. Time went on and Walker says: “When the nigger’s feet began to smell bad along in April I cut them off. They were dead and it didn’t hurt him.” He then told me about sawing off the bones in June. He seemed to be proud of his work and couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with it.

This man Walker is not a fiend and has none of the appearances of a brute. He is simple, inoffensive and as mild a mannered a Mutt as one could find in a day’s journey. In fact he goes by the name of “Dolly” among his neighbors. He is just a simple-minded, bloodless, clod of a fellow and would be accepted as a “good” citizen in almost any community.

Introducing Dr. Williams

But what about the County Physician who permitted a helpless inmate of the County Home to suffer for months without aid and who would not respond to a call? His name is Geo. D. Williams and he lives in one of the biggest, prettiest homes in Gatesville. I went to his home and asked him about the case. He said he didn’t know whether he was the County Physician or not. He said he used to be Superintendent of Health in the county, but that the office had been abolished about two years ago and that now he served the county only as his services were called for, putting in a bill once a year for such services as rendered.

Dr. Williams admitted that Walker had told him about the Doughty case in January 1918 and asked him to perform an operation. He said he didn’t do it at that time because his wife was ill with Scarlet fever. I asked him how long his wife was ill? He said she was ill during January and February.

I then asked Dr. Williams what he was doing in March, since Walker did not perform his operation until April? Dr. Williams didn’t know. He was a little hazy about the whole matter. He impressed me as being fully as unsophisticated as Dolly Walker.

No indictment has been lodged against Dr. Williams for his unethical and inhuman conduct in the case.

Gates County Folk

The next thing that interested me was the people of Gates county. What sort of people are they to permit such flagrant neglect, mistreatment and abuse of their wards? One does not have to travel far thru Gates to find that the people of the county are above average in almost any perspective. Gates is exclusively agricultural. The principal crops are corn, cotton and peanuts. Most of the farmers turn their corn and peanuts into cattle and hogs and they produced last year 4,579 head of cattle and 15,360 hogs. The total real and personal property listed in the county last year was $2,950,393. This, of course but represents a fraction of the true wealth of the county. The people of Gates, like the people of every other county in North Carolina under the old tax system, have lied freely about their property. Sam I Harrell of Sunbury, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners, is one of the wealthy men in the county. He listed his money on hand and solvent credits at $2,000. One man whose note for #4,000 he held took offense at this and took up his note. This man said to me: “My neighbors knew that I owned Sam Harrell $4,000. When Sam Harrell swore to the tax assessors that the paper he had in hand wasn’t worth but $2,000, some one might have thought that my paper wasn’t worth but 50 cents on the dollar.”

One finds the people of Gates generally an industrious, thrifty, prosperous, intelligent, home loving, home building, church going people. One is impressed by the number of painted well-kept homes one sees on every thorofare thru the county. There are no evidences of great wealth, and there is less evidence of poverty than in any county I know anything about. It is also true that a more kindly or hospitable people will not be found in the kindly, hospitable rural south.

The Trouble With Gates

But the trouble with Gates, as with most backward counties, is political. Gates county has suffered its political administration to fall into the hands one man and has developed a backwoods Boss Tweed.  One of the shrewdest, busiest, most talkative men in Gates is Sam I. Harrell of Sunbury. He knows everything under the sun, or thinks he does—which is all the same to him. He got on the Board of Commissioners of that county about 17 years ago and proceeded to run the thing. He has been running it ever since. He admits that he knows more about the county’s affairs than any other man in the county and is perfectly willing to run everything. If folks cussed occasionally about the way he runs things, he throws out his chest, twists his cock-robin head this way and that and boasts that “nothing boosts a man like abuse.”

Mr. Harrell’s long suit is economy. He leads the thoughtless element around with a bag of money alleged to be money saved by the tax payers by his wise and economical administration of the county’s affairs The fact that bridges thruout the county are out of repairs and endangering life and limb, the fact that inmates of the county home are starving for want of wholesome food, doesn’t matter. He is saving the tax payers’ money and that’s what tax payers generally want. Why, he saved the tax payers possible a hundred shining silver dollars by letting Dolly Walker cut off Nelson Doughty’s legs with a hand saw. I am told that Mr. Harrell was so well pleased with this bit of economy that he laughed a loud laugh and kicked his heels together when he put his O.K. on Walker’s bill for $5 “for cutting off Nelson Doughty’s legs.”

Mr. Harrell Promoted

Mr. Harrell resigned as Chairman of the Board of Commissioners of Gates county last Monday. He resigned to accept another office that will pay him more money. District Tax Supervisor P.H. Williams has appointed him Tax Supervisor of Gates County. For the next few months this man who lists his solvent credits and $2,000 and his household and kitchen furniture at $150, will conduct the work of putting the property of Gates county on the tax books at “Its true valuation.” After he gets thru with that job he will be ready to go back to the Board of Commissioners again and run the county.

This newspaper has nothing to do with Gates county politics and does not presume to tell the people of that county how to run their affairs. But there is one general rule; any man who is permitted to hold the office of chairman of the Board of Commissioners of a county for 17 years will either develop into a crook or a tyrant. Exceptions merely prove the rule. Gates county would make no mistake in retiring every perennial office seeker and perpetual office holder. Until Gates county does this and gets a progressive administration of its county’s affairs, I would suggest that the churches of Gates take a little of their home and foreign missionary money and send occasional baskets of provisions to the County Home. The people of Gates know now thru this newspaper how their helpless charges fare and should not wait on a Board of Commissioners to clean things up in the County Home, even tho some other things may have to wait.

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