County Had Untrained Person Saw Off Legs of Man at Poor House To Save Money, Aug. 15, 1919

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Aug. 15, 1919

Photographs That Tell the Horrible Story

The Gates County Home for the Poor

A partial view of the County Home of Gates county. In two ramshackle shanties of this type are housed the indigent poor who have fallen in the battle of life and rely upon that county for food, raiment and shelter.

This Photograph Does Not Lie

Last week this newspaper told the remarkable story of how A.S. Walker, keeper of the County Home of Gates County, cut off the legs of Nelson Doughty, an inmate of that institution using a handsaw and a butcher knife. The County’s Commissioners of Gates paid Walker $5 for the operation. Here then is a true photographic copy of Walker’s sworn statement in which he noted the charge of $5 “for cutting off Nelson Doughty’s legs.” Photo by W.O. Saunders

Nelson Doughty

This is Nelson Doughty, the victim of the barbarous “surgery” of the keep er of the Gates County Poor Home. Nelson is just an idiotic, helpless, friendless black boy. In the severe winter of December 1917 his feet froze, due to lack of clothing and fuel provided at the County Home. He was permitted to crawl about with his dead feet until they began to rot and fall off from the bone. And the keeper of the County Home took a handsaw and a butcher knife and cut off the offensive members, just below the knees. The Board of Commissioners of Gates County paid the keeper $5 for his sorry job. This did not occur among the Bolshevik in Siberia, nor among the Huns in Belgium prior to the signing of the armistice. It occurred in the Christian county of Gates, famed for its robust Americanism and its bald-headed piety. Only this newspaper has dared to get the facts and give them to the public. Gates county will redeem itself in the eyes of the outside world not until it has inflicted the severest possible penalties upon the men in authority in that county who permitted this barbarous deed. The fact that the victim of the horror is only an ignorant, friendless Negro makes the infamy all the more damnable. The accompanying illustration is from a photo by W.O. Saunders.

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NOT GUILTY--Yes, He Sawed Off Negro's Legs, But That's Not A Crime

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Dec. 19, 1919

Keeper Walker Was Acquitted. . . Cutting Off Negro’s Legs With Hacksaw Is Not a Crime in Gates

A.S. Walker, keeper of the Gates County Home for the Poor, was acquitted of a charge of assault by a Gates County Jury last week. The charge grew out of the fact that Mr. Walker had amputated the legs of a Negro inmate of the County Home with a hack saw and a butcher knife. The gruesome facts and photographic evidence of the horror were published in this newspaper, issues of August 8 and 15, 1919.

Chairman S.I. Harrell and two other members of the Board of Commissioners of Gates County were convicted in the same court last week on a charge of neglect in the administration of the affairs of the County Home. They were taxed with the costs of the case only.

In the severe winter of 1917-18 Nelson Doughty, a weak minded colored boy in the Gates County Home had both of his feet to freeze. When his feet became rotten and offensive the following summer the keeper of the home, A.S. Walker was convinced that the feet should be amputated. Gates county na no regular county physician and the doctor who served the county on call didn’t find it convenient to perform an operation on the crazy Negro at the poor house. So Keeper Walker armed himself with a hacksaw and a butcher knife and performed the job himself. The first operation wasn’t altogether satisfactory, so he performed a second, sawing the legs off near the knees. The Negro lived and the Board of Commissioners was so pleased with the operation and the economy of $5 “for cutting off Nelson Doughty’s Legs.”

Public opinion was so outraged when the facts came out, that the prosecution of Walker and the Board of commissioners was demanded. The prosecution resulted about as such prosecutions usually result where the interests of white men influence are involved on the one side against the interests of an “ordinary nigger” on the other side.

Let it not be thought however that the prosecution was without wholesome results. The prosecution together with the publicity given by this newspaper turned the attention of the good people of Gates county to the niggardly and neglectful administration of their County Home. The keeper of that home was allowed only $3.50 to $4.50 a month for the board of each inmate. Imagine, if you can, what food one gets these days for $4.50 a month or about a dollar a week! But all that has been changed; the Commissioners of Gates now allow $15 per month for the board of each inmate in the County Home and it will be a long time before another Board of Commissioners in that county tries to save the county’s funds at the expense of the county’s poor.