FULL
TEXT: I tiptoed up to the little white bed in the Special Surgical Unit of the
University of Texas Medical Branch Tuesday afternoon and saw a little girl
whose head was swathed in bandages.
She
was 10-year-old Jewell Louise Kelley of Texas City, who Monday was beaten by
her step-mother because she could not drink two glasses of water.
The
slender child turned her head from side to side. Her eyelids blackened and
swollen, it was hard to tell whether she slept or was awake.
But
she was conscious for the first time since she was brought in Monday. She
didn’t complain.
~
Black and Blue Spots ~
When
she took from beneath the her arms out sheet – I got a glimpse of what a
beating she got. Great big black and blue spots, bigger than the size of a
silver dollar, covered her arms.
From
her neck down there were dark ugly welts. The bruised spot overlapped each
other. Her physician. Dr. Ira Jackson, aid she “might make it now that he had
regained consciousness.
~
“Worse Than Pacific” ~
One
of the doctors commented, “I was out in the Pacific during the war and I’ve
seen prisoners come back after they’d gotten the works. Never did I see one
that was in the condition in which that child is.”
That
tells the story of Jewell Louisa’s plight at the hospital.
Then
I went to the county jail where I saw the woman who inflicted the flogging with
a leather belt at the end of which was a metal buckle.
Mrs.
Frances Calhoun Kelley, the step-mother, was sullen. She didn’t want to see
anybody. She had nothing to say. She wanted to be left alone.
~
Confined Alone ~
The
matron, Mrs. Catherine De Rulle, brought her from the cell in which she was
confined away from the other women inmates.
“The
women up here are up in arms what she she did to the little girl, so I put her apart from them
so they won’t harm her,” the matron explained.
Wringing
her hands, the woman said she couldn’t talk about what happened. Her eyes
showed the lack of sleep.
I jus
wanted to be sure those kids are all right,” she said, then wiped away a tear
which streamed down her cheek. Her reddish blonde hair was disheveled and there
was no make-up to hid the freckles on her face.
~
Worked As Waitress ~
She
told me she has been married previously and that she was working as a waitress
in Texas when she married Kelley.
“What
made you beat the child like that?” I asked.
She
repeated she didn’t want to talk about it.
I
reminded her she would be forced to talk about it when she is brought to trial.
“When
the time comes I’ll talk about it – don’t you like the child – you don’t look
like the type of person who would almost beat a little girl to death,” I said.
~
“Been Too Good” ~
“I
guess that’s my trouble. I’ve always been too good,” she said.
Then
she walked away, down the corridor. She vanished from view as she entered her
cell.
“Fran
can rot in jail for all I care. I never want to see her again – I could never
forgive her for what she did to my baby,” the father, Barney G. Kelley told me
Thursday night.
He
was there to see his “little Louise,” as she called the child.
“I
don’t know what got into her,” he said more to himself than to me, as he sat on
the steps of the special surgical ward at the hospital.
~
Strict With Kids ~
“She
was strict with the kids. She beat them sometimes harder than I thought she
should and I told her about it,” he went on.
“When
we were going together before we married, she said she wanted the children.
Never had any of her own.”
“At
that time my first wife’s parents were taking care of them and they (the
parents) were living with us.
“I
thought Fran would make those kids a good mother – and they needed one badly,
so we got married,” the father said.
“She
was a good housekeeper
~
Came on Bicycle ~
“I’d
hardly been back at work a half hour, when Barney came on his bicycle to get
me. He said that Mother had beaten Louise and she was hurt,” the father said.
On arriving home, the child was in their bedroom.
“Well, Barney,” he quoted her as saying, “I beat her and
hurt her bad, but just let the kids get all right and I’ll leave.”
They took the child to County Memorial Hospital.
“I told my wife to take the car and go home. That’s the last
I saw of her., and I hope I never see her again,” Kelley said.
~ “Can’t Forgive” ~
“What I have seen my baby suffer here, I could never forgive
Fran for.”
Then he went into the ward where his little girl lay.
She knew him.
He bent over her small bed and she clutched her hand
tightly.
He put his arm under her pillow, hugged her, kissed her
bruised face and said, “It’s all right. Daddy’s right here.”
Louise smiled. She stretched out her bruised arms and put
them around her daddy.
~ ~ Beaten Girl in Semi-Coma ~ ~
Little Jewell Louise Kelley, 10-year-old Texas City girl who
was badly beaten at her home Monday, was still on the critical list at John
Sealy hospital Thursday night, but she had regained partial consciousness.”
“She might make it,” an attending physician said of the
dark-haired girl whose beating law officers termed one of the worst they has
investigated.
Meanwhile the stepmother, Mrs. Frances Kelley, 38, was in
Galveston county jail under $10,000 bond on a charge of assault to murder.
Bond was set at a preliminary hearing in Justice of the
Peace G. P. Redell’s court at 2 p.m. Thursday. Judge Redell continued the
hearing until little Jewell is able to appear in court.
Earlier Thursday, Mrs. Marjorie Moore, representing the
Galveston county welfare unit, appeared before juvenile court Judge Donald M.
Markle asking custody of the Kelley children.
Jewell Louise, her nine-year-old sister, Sandra, and her
brother, Barney Glenn, 12, were declared by the judge to be dependent and
neglected children, and he granted an offer giving the welfare custody.
The welfare unit, in turn, placed the children in the
custody of the maternal grandparents. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Galloway of Texas
City. They are the parents of the children’s mother, who died seven years ago.
[Terry McLeod, “Condition Of Beaten Child
Worse Than Pacific PWs, Says Doctor,” The Galveston Daily News (Tx.), Apr. 10,
1953, p. 1]
***
***
[1363-10/4/21]
***
No comments:
Post a Comment