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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