274 FLORENTINE HACKBUSCH 



session of Court shows a preponderance of the family names of this tribe. 

 Yet little is done about them. Most of the citizens, and therefore the 

 officials, take the attitude, "We've always had them with us and always 

 shall have them," and continue, either trying to reform them or paying the 

 costs of their crimes and dependency. 



A far different story can be told when county officials are interested. 

 In 1923 at our first clinic in another county a boy of fifteen was brought in. 

 He was still in the second grade and was obviously defective. His mother 

 who accompanied him was just as obviously defective, and from her we 

 learned that while all of the members of the family had attended school at 

 some time, none of them could read or write, and one girl in particular, Lena, 

 "never took to learning." The father who was a cousin of the mother was 

 also defective. One daughter had married a relative, also defective. In 

 fact, the whole family was known to be poor stock for several generations 

 back. They had been woodsmen, living in the mountains, and had finally 

 drifted into town, where they collected garbage for a living. 



The boy seemed relatively harmless and it was recommended that he be 

 excused from school and allowed to work with his father. At the next clinic 

 an official from a neighboring county brought in a young woman and her two 

 stepdaughters, Ethel and Martha. In a recent murder trial of the woman's 

 father, she had seemed so defective on the stand that the Court felt some- 

 thing should be done about her and the family. The daughter Ethel was 

 found to be defective and pregnant and was cared for at a maternity home 

 and then sent to a state institution. Martha was not defective, and a child- 

 caring organization took charge of her. Shortly afterward in our women's 

 reformatory we found the mother of these two girls. She had left her 

 husband years before and had been living around with various men and 

 had finally drifted into Court. She had become sterile through disease 

 and so was not permanently institutionalized. Through her we discovered 

 that this family was related to the defective family previously mentioned. 



Next the daughter Lena, "who never took to learning," came to our 

 attention. The family had been put out of the house in which they lived, 

 and as no one else would rent them a place they finally secured a tarpaulin 

 to cover their household goods, and a tent which they pitched alongside the 

 road, and in which the seventeen members of the family lived. Lena, an 

 unattractive, goitrous imbecile, already had one illegitimate child, and was 

 again attracting attention by her promiscuity. She was sent to a state 

 institution, with the cooperation of the State Police, and her child was 

 placed in the children's home. When this child did not develop properly 

 there, she was sent to a private school for defectives, as the state school 



