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Show I ' i 1 f? f-..... y R : I H ' - l I Sentenced to Bp : AJhiS- ' - -V':mM I l! iWflCfC fO Judge John Stelk Teaching His Ten Command- ' ' F ments for Automobilists to a KifJJU v 4 Woman Speeder. Jjlflfllifet ' ' I the Silent Victims of Reckless recoiled, I Drivers While the Morgue I Keeper s Sepulchral roice Reproaches I hem rti I fHERE had been in Chicago, as thero has been in all the large cities with-in with-in the last twelve months, an appalling appal-ling increase of deaths and injuries caused by reckless, inefficient and speeding auto-mobilist?. auto-mobilist?. Neither fines nor Imprisonment had served to check the careless and dangerous dan-gerous drivers. The majority of arrests came before Judge John Stelk in -what is known r:s the Speeders' Court. Judge Stelk thought long and minutely upon the problem. At last ho came to a decision. The next day eight automobile drivers "were brought before him for exceeding the leeal limits. They were all fiit offenders, no accidents were charged against them, and. pleading guilty, they waited to hear what their fines would be. On- of them was a woman Judge Stelk looked them over reverely "You are expecting to be fined,' he said, "but that Is not to be the sentence of this jourt. You hare beeu fortunate in that you jave killed no one as yet; but inevitably you w ill "You are sentenced to go to the Morgue. There you will e the maimed body of a ittle girl killed by a speeder You will ook at that child and her wounds will be ihown vou. Learn a lesson from the fate of that little one who. but for men like you. would have grown up to have been a wife and mother. After you have Been, go home. ( will continue all your cases for a wek 10 that you can think over the matter." The automobillsts looked at each other; tin.- woman's face t;rev, white "'o." she cried. ""So, 111 pay my fine, i 11 promise not to speed again But I can't go there!'' "You must go." ordered the Judge Inflexibly In-flexibly Officers tami' forward and took them in harge. Outside the court l v. o automobiles were waiting, and in these the prisoners were carried to the Morgue Through its dOonp they went The Morgue- keeper, Samuel L. Davis, was wailing for theim He guided them into the immense room where are the cabinets whose Icy depths hold the bodies of the unknown dead. Now it Is a fart that every place has its atmosphere, it? personality, that Is woven from us uses and the reactions of its uses ipon those who frequent it This is not accultlsm it Is a psychological fact Every one knows tho influence of the cathedral, of the church upon the mind, the soothing, tran. luilizlng effect upon those who enter with their fear and sorrows. It is the spirit of the plaod, made up not only of tl e images that it calls to mind, but of the hopes and thoughts of the worshippers, which persist, perhaps, like Incense, even though the censer has long ceased to burn. The circus carries its atmosphere, and so c'o the theatres Thero are iouses which are termed "unhappy" and which upon entering seem to smother down upon every impulse of jo . There is no place in which this curious psychological atmosphere is so pronounced as the Morgue. Here lie the unknown dead, the suicides, the lost ones, those who have passed away in loneliness and poverty, pov-erty, the victims of accident and of cruelty, And into it come those who oeek for loved ones who have vanished. They come with terror of what they may find, struggling with hope that they may not find it. The silence of the Morgue I "tie of anguish "When it is broken it is usually by the sound of lamentation. The only joy that ever flares up within it is a negative one; he whom the seeker came to find was not there but still remains unfound. Into this place of gloom filled with the ghosts of sorrow the eight speeders were ushered. The policemen left them They huddled together while the Morgue keeper closed the door and locked it behind them. Before them was a long row of glass-covered glass-covered cases, looking not unlike specimen cases in a museum. The air of the place was cold and smellcd faintly of death "Come," said the Morgue keeper. He led them over One of the cases he unlocked and drew out from it a slab on which lay, covered with white cloth, a shapeless heap. He snapped on an electric bulb, drew slowly back the sheet. They looked down upon tho face of a little girl. She had not been more than five years of age. There was a glimpse of white beneath the long curving lashes of her still, white lids. A curl of soft brown hair lay over her cheek, half hiding a wicked cut Except for that blemish the face was untouched and calm. "Maybe some of you have got a little girl like this of your own." said the Morgue keeper. His voice was sepulchral In the silent hall. ' The man that killed her was going- forty-five miles an hour in a street where there are many children. She never had a chance " Quickly he threw off the balance of the covering cloth . "Here's what he did to her'" he said. The eight looked down upon the little figure. The woman recoiled, covered her eyes, staggered back, half fainting. "i can't 3tand it." she cried. "She's like mv own little girl-" She ran to the locked door and beat it with her hands. "Let me out! Let me out!" she wailed "You have got to come back," said the Morgue keeper, and drew her relentlessly over to the slab again. The little body v. as twisted and mangled, a gaping cut ran from shoulder to navel, one small rounded leg had boon crushed almost into pulp from knee to foot "That's what the speeders do," said th-5 Morgue keeper. "That's what people like vou do." He covered the child again, pushed It back into the case, locked the doors In utter silence the white-faced, shaking men followed him to the door and as silently filed through it and without a word to each other went their ways A week later they came again before Judge Stelk. "I have a little girl at home of my own." said one. "and all this week I have' dreamed of her on that Morgue slab in the place of that other child. You have taught me a lesson. Judge. Ill never speed any more" And this, in effect, was what all the others said. And dav by day as the speed-en speed-en come before Judge Stelk they make that pilgrimage to the place of death, and few there are who come out of it unchanged. un-changed. There are very real, very potent psycho-logical psycho-logical factors in this Chicago justice's unusual un-usual expedient to cope with the speeder. It is something that lies outside the precise pre-cise books of law and formal statutes. Judges and executives have called upon it from time to time when the formal code proved inadequate. Solomon did it when he ordered his executioner to cut in two the baby claimed by the two women it IE Hilt L .'.,...'e, . . fsmk . . - Chicago's Morgue Keeper Davis Reading to Speeders Sentenced by 2 Judge Sfceik Their Grim Lesson from the Body of a v 11 Victim of Reckless Driving. figured In the old trials by ordeal, which even now exist in certain countries. This factor is the human equation Judge Stelk explains it thl? way: "The greatest determining factor of conduct con-duct is the ability to visualize. The mind thinks most easily in pictures I believe that the majority of crimes resulting from what we call recklessness, negligence or thoughtlessness come from an inability properly to visualize possible consequence of such recklessness, negligence or thoughtlessness. "I believe that there war, a positive deterrent de-terrent influence in some of the old ordeals. or-deals. Particularly was there in that one which compelled a person suspected of murder to walk up to the body of the murdered mur-dered one and lay his or her hand upon it. The idea was that if he or she who touched the body were guilty blood would flow from the wounds. "Of course, this was entirely unscientific but most people belied it. and the terror ter-ror of having to look upon rhe body of a victim and run the chance has kept, I believe, be-lieve, many murders from being done. It was a device unconscious, of course, to fix In people's minds a picture of consequences. conse-quences. "In trying this experiment with speeders this was the backbone of my idea. I did not believe that men' deliberately or with pleasure ran down people It was simply that they had not the power, or never had tried, Co visualise what might happen, and some tune certainly would happen, from giving way to the speeding impulse. "I determined to provide the picture and. of course, there was no better setting for it, no place better for focussing it and impressing im-pressing it upon the mind than the Morgue. "Of course, I knew it would not work with every one. There arc? some people in which the mania for speeding Is oo great that no picture or no realization of consequences conse-quences can deter them. t. i average man no more wants to bu t any one than you or I do. The maniac- u e few, and we can handle them with the jails and long sentences. YYe wish, however, to cure rather than to destroy. "There is not one man in a hundred coming from the Morgue who will ever forget for-get what he has seen. Linked up with his speedometer will bo that vision, and as the ne?dle on the dial points toward the danger i f. t( mark what he has seen in the Morgue will lwiii appear before him clearly. roi "I know the experiment has been a sue-cess. sue-cess. It has cured more reckless drivers Wtr and speeders than fines and Jail ever had I. I hope others trv it." ""v Not long ago Judge Stelk framed a set II of tr-n commandments for au'u ii K dj I rers. They are n 1 FIRST Thou shalt not speed I f SECOND -Thou shall slow up and give hi warning when approaching man or beast Kfjlp11 THIRD Thou shalt give signal when in .jnfjf tending to swerve or turn to right or left Hft Q FOCR'TH Thou shalt cignal when stop FIFTH Thou shalt give true name and addn-ss when pinched I SIXTH Thou shalt render assistance tc Es any l tlms. h SEVENTH Thou shalt not open cutout gu or race motor at night when thy neighbor ( U( KXi sleepeth. KLtur EIGHTH Thou shalt always turn to the 0ne- J right wheh meeting others li" yom MXTII Thou tdialt wear chains in W mp nr weather. fSd'5n T B NTH Thou shalt not attempt to too. B. 1 1 the judge. |
