THE IRISH ORPHAN INCIDENT

The Irish Orphan Abduction
A tale of race, religion and lawlessness in turn-of-the-century
Southern Arizona
By Margaret Regan
• At the turn of the century, Clifton was a Wild West mining
town. The copper smelter stained the air with
sulfurous emissions, and some women blamed their infertility
on the pollution. At right is Chase Creek.
On a summer day in 1900, July 14 to be exact, Jerome Shanley
was born in New
York City.
His birth was hardly joyous. His mother, her name unrecorded,
delivered him in
a home for unwed mothers, and then vanished into the city's
teeming streets.
Little Jerome was allowed to stay at the home for five weeks,
but on Aug. 21, a
nurse carried the abandoned infant to the New York Foundling
Hospital.
Katherine Fitzpatrick seemed to have slightly better prospects.
She was born a
year later, on Sept. 9, 1901, at the Sloane Maternity Hospital.
Though the birth
took place in the "charity wards" designated for the city's poor,
her mother
didn't give her up, not at first, anyway. The woman, whose

name is also lost to
history, kept baby Katherine long enough to see her first smile,
and her first
golden curls coming in.
But when she was six months old, Katherine, too, was
relinquished. The mother
herself brought the child to the Foundling, handing her over on
March 25,
1902. The date must have stung this Irish Catholic woman. It
was the Feast of
the Annunciation, when Catholics celebrate the pregnancy of
the Virgin Mary.
Jerome and Katherine were only two of thousands abandoned to
the Foundling.
Between 1869, the year it was founded by an Irish-American
nun named Sister
Mary Irene Fitzgibbon, and 1904, the institution took in some
35,000 babies,
primarily offspring of the city's reviled, impoverished Irish.
Staggering numbers of Irish immigrants had flooded the city
since the Great
Famine of the late 1840s. Subject to discrimination, they earned
pitiful wages
and crammed into unhealthful tenements. The Irish had come up
in the world
by the turn of the century, but they still accounted for a large
percentage of the
city's paupers.
Kids like Katherine and Jerome, born to single mothers, were
"regarded by Irish

and non-Irish alike as base, children of the underclass," writes
historian Linda
Gordon, who chronicles their tale in her book The Great
Arizona Orphan
Abduction. Their futures looked bleak.
Nothing about either child suggested that they would become
the subjects of a
fierce custody battle or, even more preposterously, celebrity
darlings in the
early days of mass media, written about in papers from coast to
coast.
But that's exactly what happened. The nuns managed to find
permanent foster
homes for about a third of the children in their care, and Jerome
and Katherine,
luckily or unluckily, won a spot in the faraway West. Nuns from
the Foundling
took them to Arizona in a group of 40 orphans in October 1904,
when
Katherine was 3 and Jerome was 4. All of the children were
placed in Mexican
Catholic homes in the Wild West mining towns of Clifton and
Morenci. Katherine
and Jerome were destined to become siblings in the home of
Cornelio and
Margarita Chacón.
But the towns' Anglos, primarily non-Catholics, became
incensed at the sight of
white toddlers handed over to brown-skinned Hispanics. Within
hours of the
orphans' arrival, outraged Anglos gathered in threatening mobs.
Within 24
hours--in a blinding monsoon, no less--a posse of 25 vigilantes

stormed the
Mexican homes and, armed with pistols, kidnapped the children.
Within 72 hours, the young priest had been ridden out of town,
one step ahead
of a lynch mob, and a throng of white "mothers" had picked out
orphans to
keep as their very own. The nuns managed to escape with 21 of
the kids, but
the rest stayed behind, permanently, with their new white, non-
Catholic
families.
The case made the papers all across the country, and the
ensuing court case
wended its way all the way up to the Arizona Supreme Court,
but in every
venue, the finding was the same: Mexicans were unfit in every
possible way to
raise white children.
But a funny thing had happened on the orphans' way to the
West. Back East,
Jerome and Katherine weren't even in the exalted racial
category of "white."
They were something different, and infinitely inferior: Irish. As
Gordon remarks,
the "train ride had transformed them from Irish to white."
Perched high in the mountains of Eastern Arizona, the tiny
towns of Clifton
and Morenci hardly seem like a dream home for orphans of any
color. Cliffs
loom on all sides of Clifton, and Chase Creek and the San

Francisco River run
through the narrow swathe of flat, buildable land. The rivers
flood frequently,
washing away houses and businesses. Everywhere, rising high
overhead,
tumbling down gulleys, are rusty-orange rocks, shot through
with the copper
that has long given the townsfolk their living.
In 1904, Morenci, 1,000 feet up from Clifton, was a shoot-'em-
up place
nicknamed Hell Town that went head to head with Tombstone
for the title of
toughest town in Arizona. Morenci was more camp than town,
and Clifton had a
bit more of a business district, but saloons and brothels
flourished in both
places.
Violence was routine. A squad of armed Arizona Rangers came
in to settle a
strike in 1903 that had pitted whites against Mexicans. Famed
healer Teresita
Urrea, the Saint of Cabora, lived in Clifton, and when she
entered an abusive
marriage in 1900, a posse of 200 men pursued her gun-toting
husband and
threw him in jail.
Health and sanitation were poor. Morenci had no sewer system,
and a typhoid
epidemic swept through in late October 1904, shortly after the
orphan episode.
Both towns had bad water and bad air, polluted by the smelter's
sulfurous
emissions. Gordon records high rates of infertility in the towns,

accounting for
large numbers of women with baby hunger. At least one of the
white adoptive
mothers blamed her infertility on the pollution.
Mexicans and Mexican Americans (called Mexicans no matter
where they were
born) were a majority in both towns--perhaps 60 percent in
Clifton, 70 percent
in Morenci--but the copper mines enforced a rigid hierarchy in
jobs and wages.
It was a given that whites got the best jobs and the best pay. But
"white" was
more broadly defined here: It took in Americans of English
descent, Scotsmen
and, a notch down, Irish, Italians and Spaniards: anyone, in
short, who wasn't
Mexican or Chinese.
The local Anglos were not particularly religious--in 1904,
Clifton had only one
Protestant church, Presbyterian--but Mexicans were generally
devout Catholics.
The town's first Catholic church, Sacred Heart, had opened way
back in 1882,
but three successive church structures were destroyed by fire or
deluge. Still,
the faithful kept rebuilding.
It was the Mexicans' religious faith that inspired the nuns to
place Irish New
Yorkers in an Arizona mining camp in the first place. The nuns
held fiercely to
the idea that Irish Catholics, no matter how poor, had a right to

their own
religion. For their immortal souls to be saved, the orphans had
to be raised in
the "one true church."
The nuns had reason to fear for the kids' souls. For decades, do-
gooder
Protestant social workers in New York had virtually kidnapped
Irish Catholic
urchins off the streets--some of them orphans, some of them
not--and
shipped them out West.
As historian Maureen Fitzgerald recounts in Habits of
Compassion: Irish
Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's Welfare System,
1830-1920, Irish
kids swarmed the sidewalks of New York. These "ulcers of
society," as The New
York Times called them, did what they could to put crumbs on
the family table,
begging, working, rag-picking, stealing.
The best remedy for this plague of disorderly young Papists,
Protestant leaders
agreed, was to transfer them "into Protestant homes outside the
city."
The legal mechanism for snatching kids away was a truancy
law, which
permitted any child not in school during school hours to be
arrested and
brought to a private mission, invariably Protestant. Fitzgerald
writes that
mission workers had no legal obligation even to contact the
parents. If the

impoverished mothers and fathers--many of them immigrants,
not savvy to the
ways of the city--never found them, the children could be
legally committed for
their entire childhood to the jurisdiction of the agency.
Which is where the notorious orphan trains come in.
A Methodist minister by the name of Charles Loring Brace,
founder of the
Children's Aid Society, conceived of the trains as an ingenious--
and
inexpensive--alternative to orphanages for the wretched Irish
refuse. Families
in the fabled American countryside would take in the street
urchins and put
them to work in the wholesome outdoors.
"The demand (in the Midwest and West) for children's labor is
practically
unlimited," he enthused in 1880. "A child's place at the table of
the farmer is
always open; his food and cost to the family are of little
account."
Brace's trains duly rolled out with 1,000 "orphans" a year by
1864. By 1910,
Gordon calculates, some 110,000 had been railroaded out of
town. At their
destinations, crowds attracted by newspaper ads inspected the
children like
cattle. To Catholics, the outward-bound shipments of mostly
Irish-Catholic kids
amounted to nothing less than cultural genocide.

The Sisters of Charity set out to counteract them. The child of
Irish famine
refugees, Sister Mary Irene opened the order's first Foundling
house in 1870.
From the start, the nuns allowed poor mothers to drop off babies
without
censure, and gave them up to three years to reclaim them.
Like Brace, the Sisters of Charity also turned to placing out, but
they followed
strict guidelines. The ideal age was 3, when children were
weaned but too
young to be sought for their labor. Particular families were
vetted and matched
in advance to each tot: no cattle calls. Most importantly, the
foster families had
to be practicing Catholics who would raise the orphans in their
ancient faith.
Clifton had a new priest. Father Constant Mandin, at 26 a
freshly minted
clergyman, had arrived in town in the spring of 1904. He was an
outsider, a
Frenchman, here on his first pastoral assignment. Early on, he
received a letter
from the Sisters of Charity in faraway New York. Would any of
his parishioners
be interested in taking in a foundling? Mandin ignored the
request at first. But
when he received a second letter, he read it aloud to his Sacred
Heart
congregation, as A. Blake Brophy reports in Foundlings on the
Frontier.
Sixty parishioners applied to take a child; most of the 33

Mandin picked were
mining families with a father earning a "Mexican" wage of
$1.50 to $2.50 a day.
The childless Chacóns were probably the best off. Cornelio, a
skimmer at the
copper smelter, was at the top of the Mexican pay scale.
Margarita, a
schoolteacher, taught Mexican children in their home.
On Sept. 25, their future children set out by train from Grand
Central Station.
Sister Anna Michaella Bowen headed the orphan brigade,
assisted by Sister Ann
Corsini Cross, an Irish immigrant; Sister Francis Liguori Keller,
a French-born
nun; four nurses and placement agent George Swayne.
The children ranged in age from 2 to 6, and they were a
decidedly Irish bunch;
besides Shanley and Fitzpatrick, they had such names as Kane,
Welsh,
Corcoran, Doherty, Ryan, Mack. The runarounds, as the nuns
called toddlers,
must have been a handful, but their early excitement soon worn
off. The
journey cross-country to Arizona was longer than they could
imagine. It was
not until the 11th day, Saturday, Oct. 1, that the brigade pulled
into Clifton in
the early evening, one day behind schedule.
The nuns' first glimpse of the place was not propitious. Two
smelters towered
over the narrow town, and black smoke stained the air. The

expected foster
mothers were at the station, but word had spread that orphan
children were
coming to town. A knot of white women pushed their way to the
front and
peered into the train windows.
What they saw delighted them. The nuns and nurses had dressed
each little girl
in a new white dress and each little boy in a sailor suit. The
girls' hair was
curled and beribboned, and every child was laced up in a pair of
shiny black
boots.
Gordon relates that Louisa Gatti could barely restrain herself.
As Louisa later
described it: "I thought to myself, 'I better get where I could see
the babies
good.' So the car pulled up a little ahead, and I goes to work and
climbs the box
car ... and (I) gets a peak at the children and jumps down and
goes up to the
butcher shop and tells Mr. Gatti, 'Oh, but there is some lovely
children in that
car over there.'"
The children were taken to Father Mandin's house. The Mexican
foster mothers
lined up, and agent Swayne and the priest checked each
woman's name against
the tag sewn into each child's garments. Soon, the children were
placed in the
arms of their new mothers.
Sister Anna Michaella later testified that she began to object to

the color
mismatch between mothers and children. Father Mandin, the
outsider, didn't
understand the problem--these were devout women of his
parish, after all. So
Sister Anna deferred to his priestly authority, reasoning that she
could take the
children back later if necessary.
In the midst of the confusion, Louisa Gatti marched in and
asked for a child,
and claimed later that a sexton told her he would see what he
could do. When
her husband, John, turned up, he spoke to the priest in French,
and learned that
no children were available. Distraught, Louisa left empty-
handed. So did the
other childless Anglo women, but not before seeing the Mexican
women--their
social inferiors--walk out with white babies.
"They not only wanted the babies," Gordon reports, "they were
beginning to
think it wasn't right for the Mexicans to take the babies ... they
were beginning
to fume when one by one the Mexican women emptied the
church of orphans."
The women took their outrage back to town. The nuns, unaware,
returned to
the sleeping car to spend the night. Early the next morning, a
Sunday, they
loaded the 24 remaining children onto wagons and, with Mandin
and Swayne,
drove up the twisting road to Morenci, leaving nurse Marian
Taylor behind. At

Holy Cross Church, a nearly identical procedure unfolded. New
parents lined
up; lists were checked; Mexican families left with Irish
children. This time,
though, Sister Anna was more assertive. She rejected nine of the
families.
The Foundling group then checked into the Morenci Hotel. But
their actions had
not escaped notice. Three men accosted Swayne, Brophy writes.
Charles Mills,
manager of Detroit Copper, along with a company doctor and
another man,
demanded an explanation: How could he place white children
with Mexicans?
Swayne curtly replied that it was none of their business.
Meanwhile, back in Clifton, the rumor mill was churning.
Anglos were trading
tales of shiftless Mexican men and immoral Mexican women.
No better than
Indians, these half-breeds had filthy homes, the talk went. They
didn't know
how to treat white children--one claimed to have seen a new
Mexican mother
give beer to her child--and would poison them with spicy
Mexican food. And
the priest was no better: He was selling babies to the highest
bidder.
There were eight female ringleaders, Gordon writes, seven of
whom would later
get orphans. By early afternoon, they persuaded five men to

take action: Sam
and Jake Abraham, Mike Riordan, Tom Simpson and Harry
Wright (who would
adopt Katherine Fitzpatrick).
The men tracked down deputy sheriff Jeff Dunagan, but he
coolly told them he
could make no arrests without a warrant. Still, he agreed to go
up to Morenci to
find Mandin and Swayne, and bring them back to Clifton.
Simpson, a railroad
engineer, went with him.
The pair, both armed, found Sister Anna Michaella first, at the
Morenci Hotel.
She explained that she intended to stay and inspect the homes,
and if any were
inappropriate, she reserved the right to remove the children.
Mills, the mine
boss, was still nosing around, and he joined the men to confront
Swayne in his
room. The men reiterated the townsfolk's objections to the
Mexican families.
Mills explained that the Mexicans earned very little money at
the mine--a fact
he was in a position to know, because he set their pitiful wages.
News had spread around the mining camp that the "pretty little
children were
going to stay in the half-breed homes," Brophy writes. A mob
grew outside the
hotel, and people were shouting they'd take the children
themselves.
Their rumblings gave Mills new ammunition. He sternly
lectured all the

outsiders about the niceties of racial discrimination in the
Southwest. Mills
might not have known that the Irish children ranked several
steps below white
in New York, but he did know that in Arizona, their placement
with Mexicans
"violated some of the deepest feelings and strongest convictions
of the
Americans in the community," Brophy writes. (To Mills and the
others,
"Americans" meant "whites.")
The Morenci multitude--some 400 in a town of only 700 whites-
-began to
push into the hotel, shouting out threats to tar and feather the
priest and
agent. One of the nuns later described the scene to a Tucson
Citizen reporter:
"In the street a sheriff sat on horseback, with a revolver, like
the other men.
Women called us vile names, and some of them put pistols to
our heads. They
said there was no law in that town; that they made their own
laws."
The New Yorkers knew defeat when they saw it. Sister Anna
ordered Swayne to
go retrieve the kids in Morenci, just a few short hours after they
had been taken
to their new homes. Later, he was to get the others in Clifton.
To make the evening even more cataclysmic, the first lightning
flashes of a

gathering monsoon blazed along the canyon walls, and "when
the rains came,
they slapped the town in wind-driven sheets," Brophy writes.
Mandin and
Swayne set out in the torrent for the Mexican homes and told
the new parents
to bring the children to the hotel immediately, storm or no
storm. The first
soaked families started showing up around 7:30 p.m., and the
last about 10
p.m.
As each family came in, mine boss Mills contemptuously read
aloud the amount
of each father's wages, Gordon reports, "to show how little they
earned."
Unbeknownst to the Foundling group up in Morenci, it was
already too late to
retrieve the Clifton orphans. All day, the Clifton crowd had
been growing bigger
and angrier by the hour. They had learned midafternoon in a
phone call from
Dunagan that Swayne would not yield. Muriel Wright, future
mother of
Katherine, urged "the good citizens of the town ... (to) rescue
these babies."
Twenty-five men formed a posse, a group they would later
describe in court as
a benign "committee." The squad included two deputy sheriffs
and George
Frazer, a superintendent at the smelter, who would later adopt
orphan Hannah
Kane.

They set out after dark, through the crashing rain, in dirt streets
turned to
muddy soup, armed with rifles and Colts. Neville Leggatt, a
deliveryman for the
Arizona Copper Company store, knew most of the houses. He
would later call
the foster parents, his faithful customers, "half Indians of the
lowest kind."
The posse stormed house after house, loudly knocking on doors,
demanding
each orphan in the name of the citizens of Clifton. But when
they got to the
home of Margarita Chacón, even Leggatt would confess later to
being ashamed.
He conceded to the court that the Chacóns were "honest
people." But the posse
had agreed on a single, one-size-fits-all plan: All Mexicans
were bad, and all
children were to be seized.
Jerome and Katherine were rousted from their new beds,
grabbed by strange
men from Margarita's arms, and taken out into the night.
By midnight, all 16 of the Clifton orphans were back at the
hotel. Wet, chilled
and exhausted, some of the children were sick to their stomachs.
A clutch of
Anglo women put them to bed in blankets on the floor, but they
didn't settle
down, understandably, until 2 a.m. One child, Josephine
Corcoran, 2 1/2, sang
hysterically until she fell asleep, Gordon recounts.

When Swayne and Mandin got back to town around midnight,
intending to
round up the children on Monday morning, they learned that the
abduction had
taken place. Even with the children retrieved, the rabble's rage
was unabated.
They demanded that Swayne wire the Foundling for permission
for Anglo
families to take the children, and when Swayne refused, Sam
Abraham barred
the agent and the priest from his hotel. Dunagan took them over
to a Mexican
boardinghouse. Dunagan and Simpson spent the night with
them--if the men
were not exactly under arrest, they were in protective custody.
Monday morning, Oct. 3, nurse Marian Taylor came downstairs
to find 16 of her
former charges scurrying around the hotel lobby. When she
protested, Brophy
writes, Abraham told her that since "the sisters had given them
to the Mexicans
... (they) had lost all right to them."
And the Anglo women were already divvying them up.
"People began literally fighting over children," Gordon relates.
"The children
were being dickered over as if at a bazaar."
A Mrs. Pascoe claimed Jerome Shanley, and Muriel Wright took
Katherine
Fitzpatrick, ending the children's short-lived siblingship. Mrs.
Jake Abraham
took singing Josephine, and Laura Abraham, wife of Sam,

helped herself to the
youngest, Elizabeth Kane, who would turn 2 on Oct. 5. Pushy
Louisa Gatti
walked off with William Norton, age 3.
The Anglos hoped to legitimize these putative adoptions that
evening, when
P.C. Little, a probate judge from Solomonville, arrived on the
evening train. But
he said, correctly, that he couldn't sign adoption papers without
the
authorization of the Foundling, the legal guardian. But he also
refused to
restore the children to the custody of the Foundling's reps. By
default, the
children would stay where they were.
When the mob heard the bad news about the adoptions, they
exploded and
chased Swayne and Mandin into the streets. The two hid out in
the rear room of
a saloon until the coast was clear, and then hightailed it back to
Morenci with
Dunagan. But a grim announcement awaited.
Deputy Gus Hobbs informed them that the whites of Morenci
intended to follow
Clifton's suit. They planned to grab the kids from the nuns and
hand them out
to Anglos. Hobbs further ordered the whole New York group--
and the priest--
to get out of town the next morning, Tuesday, Oct. 4, on the 7
a.m. train.

Sister Anna Michaella declared that she, her nuns and nurses
would stay behind
with the children and face down any kidnappers. But Swayne
and Mandin did
not need too much persuading, and they hopped the morning
train, throngs
jeering in their wake. His first pastoral ministry in tatters,
Mandin headed for
Tucson and the protection of his bishop, Henri Granjon. Swayne
went to El
Paso, Texas, to wait for the sisters.
"The seven women were to face the mob alone," Gordon writes.
But Dunagan played a couple of unexpected cards. First, he told
the women
that they would never be able to take the children from town,
because the
engineer had vowed he wouldn't allow them on the train.
Second, he revealed
that Swayne had promised him two children in return for
keeping the agent
safe.
Defeated, Sister Anna allowed him his pick. He chose Hannah
Kane, 3 1/2, and
Edward Cummiskey, 4 1/2. But Dunagan didn't want the tots for
himself. He
would hand Hannah over to Clifton smelter boss George Frazer,
perhaps
seeking to gain favor with a higher-up, and Edward to a J.T.
Kelly.
The fire sale was on. Charles Mills, the Morenci mine boss,
turned up next. It
seemed his friend, a Dr. W.F. Davis, a Clifton physician now

living in Los
Angeles, had asked Mills to pick out a child for him. Sister
Anna permitted this,
too, and he selected a little girl.
Even these concessions did not endear the nuns to the circling
mobs.
"The Morenci crowd ... turned its fury on the sisters, and
Tuesday became the
most terrifying day of all," Gordon writes. Men with guns
invaded the nuns'
hotel rooms, trailed by women calling them slave traders and
worse.
Sister Anna managed to slip out and track down Mills. Mollified
now that he'd
gotten a child for his friend, perhaps, the mine boss ordered the
hotel to eject
the crowds. And he promised to put his company guards on
watch, and even
allow the whole party to leave town the next day--nuns, nurses,
kids and all.
Next morning, Wednesday, Oct. 5, the guards escorted the baby
brigade to
Morenci station. They got out of Hell Town on the 7 a.m. train,
leaving 19 souls
behind.
The nuns never got Jerome or Katherine or the other children
back. In New
York, where the work of the Foundling was well known, the

New York Daily
News slammed Morenci and Clifton as the most "debased
localities (that) can be
found on the entire southern tier of States ... . The beseeching
nuns were
beaten off and the sobbing little ones were distributed among
the vilest haunts
of the two towns ..."
But the Western papers replayed timeworn anti-Catholic and
anti-Mexican
slurs. The Arizona Bulletin condemned Catholics for selling
"sweet, innocent,
white American babies" to "squalid, half-civilized Mexicans of
the lowest class."
Even President Theodore Roosevelt got involved. In New York,
the Ancient Order
of Hibernians complained about the kidnapping to the president,
who obliged
by directing the U.S. Attorney in Phoenix to file a friend-of-the-
court brief for
the nuns. William Henry Brophy, a wealthy Bisbee businessman
born in Ireland,
helped fund their suit, and he recommended a top Tucson
attorney, Eugene
Ives.
No criminal charges were ever filed against the vigilantes.
When the Graham
County Probate Court certified the Anglo parents as legal
guardians in
November, Ives filed an appeal with the Arizona Supreme Court
for the return of
the children. Turning their backs on the Mexican Catholics who
took in

strangers, the nuns conceded during the January 1905 trial that
the homes
were not well-chosen. The blame was placed squarely on Father
Mandin, a
foreigner who didn't understand Americans' complicated racial
calibrations.
But attorney Ives argued the law. The territory of Arizona was
bound to comply
with New York state custody laws and return the children to the
Foundling.
Cliftonian after Cliftonian answered his logic with the most
racist testimony
possible, repeating the slanders that their Mexican neighbors
were prostitutes,
low-lifes, vermin. Still, the Anglos' best argument was their
newly constituted
families. The new parents came en masse to the trial in Phoenix,
their lovely
young orphans in tow. Paraded around town and in the
courtroom, the children
became media darlings. Journalists reported their every gesture,
every cute
saying.
On Jan. 17, the Arizona Republican gushed over little
Katherine. Perched on a
desk in the courtroom, "She turned her attention to the justices,
laughed and
waved her little hand at the court en banc" and pretty much put
a stop to the
judges' efforts to keep the courtroom quiet.

Writing the unanimous decision upholding the Anglos'
guardianship, Justice
Edward Kent praised the parents.
"With humanitarian impulse ... (they) assisted in the rescue of
these little
children from the evil into which they had fallen. ... We feel
that is for their
(children's) best interests that no change be made in their
custody."
Nowhere did the judge mention posses or lynch mobs. Instead,
he lauded the
"Americans" who staged "community meetings" and "volunteer
actions" to
remove children from "degraded half-breed Indians."
Some of the adoptive parents had claimed to be Catholic,
Gordon writes, but
none were practicing, and in any case, the court hardly
addressed the nuns'
central concern: the right of the Irish children to be raised in
their ancestral
faith. For the courts, race trumped religion.
The Foundling appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in
December 1906, the
highest court ruled it lacked jurisdiction. The lower court
finding stood, and the
Clifton white parents legally adopted the children. Their
homecoming merited a
festival among the white residents, but the sensational case
hardened the racial
barriers in the twin mining camps.
Father Mandin never returned. He became the longtime priest in

Bisbee, where,
ironically, he served a community of Irish-born miners, and
built St. Patrick's,
an elaborate church that still stands. Sacred Heart Church
washed away again in
a flood in 1905. Margarita Chacón told a census taker in 1910
that she had only
one living baby, after losing six others. Sister Anna Michaella
became leader of
the Sisters of Charity in 1917.
And the children? A 1906 photo pictures golden-haired
Katherine Wright,
formerly Fitzpatrick, swathed in a white dress, lounging in the
lap of her
adoptive aunt, Mae Wright Simpson, the very picture of
respectability.
Little singing Josephine, adopted by the Abrahams, didn't fare
as well. She died
of pneumonia in December 1904; she'd been sick ever since her
untimely
outing in the October storm. Sadie Green, renamed Gladys
Freeman, was raised
in Los Angeles, where she was raped and impregnated by a
grocer at the age of
13, according to files unearthed by Gordon.
In a history master's thesis for the UA, James Patton wrote in
1945 that none of
the orphans still lived in Clifton. Another writer, William R.
Ridgway, claimed in
1955 to have found a grown orphan in Clifton devotedly tending
to her aged,
adoptive mother. As for the rest, they vanished as surely as
their Irish names

were erased.
But according to writer Elena Díaz Bjórkquist, who grew up in
Morenci in the
1940s and '50s, a legend persisted in the Mexican community
that one of the
orphans escaped the vigilantes, fleeing with her new family into
the stormy
night. When the family returned after some years, they had a
pale-skinned
daughter in tow, and her hair was flaming red.
Margaret Regan based this story on information drawn from the
following published
works:Foundlings on the Frontier: Racial and Religious Conflict
in Arizona Territory,
1904-1905 by A. Blake Brophy (University of Arizona Press,
1972); Habits of
Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York's
Welfare System, 1830-
1920 by Maureen Fitzgerald (University of Illinois Press, 2006);
The Great Arizona
Orphan Abduction by Linda Gordon (Harvard University Press,
1999); Emigrants and
Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America by Kerby
A. Miller (Oxford
University Press, 1985); and "New York Foundlings at Clifton-
Morenci: Social Justice in
Arizona Territory 1904-1905," an article by Raymond A.
Mulligan in the journal Arizona
and the West(Summer 1964), pages 104 to 119. Regan
gratefully acknowledges their
work. Thanks also to Walter Mares of The Copper Era for

providing photographs.
Regan, Margaret. “The Irish Orphan Abduction : A
tale of race, religion and lawlessness in turn-
of-the-century Southern Arizona.” Tucson Weekly.
Accessed October 4, 2018.
https://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-irish-orphan-
abduction/Content?oid=1087070
HOW TO WRITE A LAB REPORT
A - Abstract (must be informative) - 5 points*
1. Compact (less than 200 words)
2. Summarizes all parts of the lab report
3. Informative (accurate, Concise and specific)
4. Self-contained (Do not cite any references, figures, or tables
in the abstract)
B - Introduction/ Hypothesis - 5 points
1. Why study this topic? Gives correct background information/
importance of topic of study.
2. Includes appropriate question(s) addressed by the lab.
3. States Hypothesis supported by prior knowledge or reasoning
presented in the Introduction.
4. Testable hypothesis presented with logical prediction of
results.
C -Materials and Methods - 5 points
1. Clear, concise and correct description of how the experiment
was performed.
2. Appropriate level of detail: basic and standard (general) v.
lab (specific)
3. In paragraph form, including the materials integrated as part
of the paragraphs
4. Deviations from the lab manual noted.
D - Results and Data Presentation - 5 points

1. Data are clearly presented in orderly and logical paragraphs.
2. The correct trends are apparent in the data and described but
not interpreted in the results; data is not described “point by
point.”
3. All appropriate figures are included, clear, well presented
and correct.
4. All appropriate figures have legend properly describing them.
E - Discussion and Conclusions - 5 points
1. Summarize the hypothesis and data.
2. Explain correctly why you observed the data you have.
3. Explain correctly why the data agrees or disagrees with
established theory.
4. Conclude: Hypothesis is accepted or rejected based on
analysis of the data presented.
The Informative Abstract*
One common type of abstract is an informative abstract. If you
are writing an abstract for a strictly-structured document like an
experiment, investigation, or survey, you will write an
informative abstract.
An informative abstract is made up of four parts:
1. Purpose
2. Methodology
3. Results
4. Conclusions
The purpose section of an informative abstract should state
either the reason for or the primary objectives of the experiment
or investigation. The purpose section of an informative abstract
might also contain the hypothesis of the experiment.
The methodology section of an informative abstract should
describe the techniques used in conducting the experiment. This
section should give only as much detail as is necessary to
understand the experiment; the abstract should not focus

entirely on research methods unless that is the primary focus of
the original document.
The results section of an informative abstract should relate the
observations and/or data collected during the experiment. This
section should be concise and informative, and only the most
important results need be included.
The conclusion section of an informative abstract should state
the evaluation or analysis of the experiment results. It should
also briefly state the implications of these results. This
conclusion section might also state whether the driving
hypothesis of the experiment was correct.
Some suggestions for preparing an abstract
After finishing the whole content, the author should re-read the
article and note down salient
points, including the nature of the problems, objectives,
methods, results, conclusions and
suggestions for further investigation. Then combine them into
the abstract later. Do not put
anything which was not present in the text, or repeat the title.
The objectives and methods, or the
nature of the study should be briefly presented. For new
methods, there should be the principle of
practice, and the scope of accuracy. Do not cite any references,
figures, or tables in the abstract.
Accentuate newly discovered organisms or compounds. If there
is a need to cite references, the
sources should be provided in bracket in the abstract. There
should be no list of references in the
abstract. The abstract not to exceed 200 words or 3% of the
article contents.
Reference
“How to Write the Titles, By-Line(s), Abstract and Keywords of
Scientific Papers”. AU J.T. 8(1): July 2004

New York Foundling Hospital v. Gatti
CITATION
203 U.S. 429 (1906)
ARGUED
April 26, 1906
DECIDED
December 3, 1906
Syllabus
A habeas corpus proceeding involving the care
and custody of a childof tender year is
not
decided on the legal right of the petitioner, but
upon the court's view, exercisingits jurisdiction
as parens patriae, of the best interest and welfare
of the child; such a proceeding does not
involve the question of personal freedom, and an
appeal will not lie to this Court, under §
1909,
Rev.Stat., from the order of the supreme courtof a
territory awarding the custody of a childof
threeyears of age to one of several rival
claimants therefor.
Appeal from 79 P. 231, dismissed.
The facts are stated in the opinion.

MR. JUSTICE DAYdelivered the opinion of the Court.
The suit below was begun by a petition for a
writ of habeas corpus, by the New York
Foundling
Hospital, a corporation of the Stateof New York,
against John C. Gatti, to command said Gatti
to produce the body of one William Norton, an
infant, and to showby what right he held such
infant under his custody and control.
The petitioner set out in substance that, by its charter,
granted by the Legislature of New York,
it was authorized to receive and keep under its
charge, custody, and control children of the
age
of two years or under, found in the City of
New York, abandoned or deserted, and left in
the
crib or otherreceptacle of petitioner for foundlings,
and to keep such children during infancy;
that the childWilliam Norton had come to it as
a foundling within the terms of its charter;
that
the petitioner, on the fourth of October, 1901,
to October 2, 1904, had the care, charge,
custody, and management of said child; that, on or
about the first of October, 1904, petitioner
placed the childin the home of a certain
person in the Town of Clifton, County of
Graham,
Territory of Arizona, to be held and cared for by
the said person in said home temporarily,
and
at all times subject to the supervision of

the petitioner and its officers and agents; that at
such
time,the petitioner had officers and agents of trained
experience at the Town of Clifton, with
instructions to supervise said childand the care and
management of it while temporarily in
the
charge and care of the said person as aforesaid;
that at all times the petitioner had the right at
will to withdraw the childfrom the care and charge of
the said person, and retain the custody
thereof, and continue to keep the said childin
pursuance of law under its care, charge,
custody,
and management during the term of its infancy, as
aforesaid.
Upon information and belief, it charges that
thereafter, and on or about the second
day of
October, 1904, one John C. Gatti, residing at
the said Town of Clifton, his servants and
employees, unlawfully and with forceand violence
entered into the house of the said person,
where at the time of said unlawful entrance, the
said child, William Norton, was, having been
placed thereas aforesaid and forcibly, unlawfully
and without right, took possession of said
William Norton, and removed him hence to the
custody of the said John Gatti. That the said
childhas ever sincesaid day been in the custody and
under the control of the said Gatti, and

that the said childis now restrained of its liberty by
the said Gatti, without the consent or
license of the petitioner, and against its desire,
intention, and protest, and in violation of its
rights under the laws of the Stateof New York,
of the United States, and of the territory.
The respondent made return and claimed to be
entitled to the custody of the childnamed in
the petition as the legally appointed guardian, duly
qualified as such under letters of
guardianship issued by the Probate Court of
Graham County, Arizona. And further set forth in
the return that the childin question is a white,
Caucasian child; that the petitioner, on or
about
the first day of October, 1904, brought the said
childto the Territory of Arizona, and abandoned
him to the keeping of a Mexican Indian, whose
name is unknown to the respondent, but
one
financially unable to properly clothe, shelter,
maintain, and educate said child, and, by reason
of his race, mode of living, habits, and
education, unfit to have the custody, care, and
education
of the child; that said person, to whom
petitioner is alleged to have abandoned said
child,
voluntarily surrendered it to certain persons,
who thereupon placed it in the care, custody,
and

control of respondent, who is a fit person
for that purpose, and it will be to the best
interest of
the childthat he be permitted to remain with the
respondent, whose purpose and intention it
is to rear, maintain, educate, and provide for said
childas though he were his own.
The petitioner traversed the return, and denied that
the said minor was in the care, custody,
and control of the respondent by virtue of
letters of guardianship, and alleged that the
said
minor has been in the care, custody, and control of
respondent Gattiby forceand violence, and
without authority of law or of any person legally
authorized to place the childin the custody
of
the respondent.
The case cameto trial on the issues of fact raised
in the petition, return, and traverse thereof
by the petitioner, and the testimony having been
heard in open court, a final order was
made
adjudging the said William Norton to be a minor
of the age of two and one-half years, and
that
his best interests required that the said John C. Gatti
have the care, custody, and control of said
infant, who was thereupon remanded to the care,
custody, and control of said respondent.
In the view which we take of the jurisdiction of
this Court to entertain the appeal in this
case, it

is unnecessary to consider the elaborate findings of
fact made in the Supreme Court of
Arizona
as the basisof its order further than they bear
upon the question of jurisdiction to entertain
this appeal.
It was found that the children were taken into
the territory by the representatives of the
foundling hospital, to remain thereand be placed in
suitable homes in Arizona, but, by
imposition practiced upon the agents of the society,
the children were distributed among
persons wholly unfit to be entrusted with them,
being, with one or two exceptions, half-breed
Mexican Indians of bad character. That thereupon a
committee was appointed from the citizens
resident of the vicinity, who visited the homes of
the persons having possession of the
children,
stating to them that they had been appointed by the
American residents to take possession of
the children, who were then voluntarily surrendered by
such persons. The children were taken
charge of by certain good women, and afterwards
the childWilliam Norton was given to the
respondent, who has sincehad his care, custody, and
control. This was done without the
consent of the society or its agents. Afterwards
letters of guardianship were issued to the
respondent by the Probate Court of Graham
County, Arizona. The petitioner took an appeal
from the order granting the letters of guardianship

to the district courtof the county. Pending
this appeal, the petition for the writ of habeas
corpus was filed.
The court, acting upon the principle that the best
interests of the infant are controlling,
awarded the care and custody thereof to the
respondent, 79 P. 231, and the petitioner took an
appeal to this Court.
Page 203 U. S. 437
The jurisdiction of the supreme courtof the
territory to issuethe writ of habeas corpus is
not
called in question in this case.
We are met at the threshold with an objection to
the appellate jurisdiction of this Court. The
appeal in such cases is allowed under cover
of § 1909, Rev.Stat. Gonzales v.
Cunningham, 164
U. S. 612. That section provides:
"SEC. 1909. Writs of error and appeals from
the final decisions of the Supreme Court of
either
of the Territories of New Mexico, Utah,
Colorado, Dakota, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, and
Wyoming shall be allowed to the Supreme Court of
the United States in the same manner and
under the same regulations as from the circuit
courts of the United States, where the
value of
the property or the amount in controversy, to be
ascertained by the oath of either party, or

of
othercompetentwitnesses,exceeds one thousand dollars,
except that a writ of error or appeal
shall be allowed to the Supreme Court of the
United States from the decision of the
supreme
courts created by this title, or of any judge
thereof, or of the district courts created by
this title,
or of any judge thereof, upon writsof habeas
corpus involving the question of personal
freedom."
The question is, therefore, is this a writ of habeas
corpus "involving the question of personal
freedom?"That this section of the statute does not
permit appeals from all cases in which
the
writ is issued is manifest in the use of
language in the act specifically limiting the
right of review
in this Court to cases of writswhich involve
the question of personal freedom.
A brief consideration of the history and nature of
the writ will, we think, make manifest the
purpose of Congress in using this restrictive
language giving the right of appeal. The writ is
usually granted in order to institute an
investigation into the illegal imprisonment or
wrongful
detention of one alleging himself to be unlawfully

restrained of his liberty.
The jurisdiction is conferred to enable the cause
of restraint to be inquired into, and the person
imprisoned or wrongfully deprived of freedom
restored to liberty.
The subject was discussed by Mr. Justice Miller in
the case of In re Burrus, 136 U. S. 586, in
which it was held that a district courtof the
United States has no authority to issuea
writ of
habeas corpus to restore an infant to the
custody of its father when unlawfully
detained by its
grandparents.
Appended to that case, and printed by request of
the members of the Court, is an instructive
opinion by Judge Betts, delivered in the case of
In re Barry, United States Circuit Court
for the
Southern District of New York, in which he
reached the conclusion that a circuit courtof
the
United States had no jurisdiction in habeas
corpus to entertain a controversy as to
the custody
of a childwhen the father sought to compel
the mother to deliver it to him -- a
question not
decided in In re Burrus. In the course of
the discussion, the learned judge points
out the origin

of the writ as a means of relief from arrest
or forcible imprisonment, and its growth in
later use
as a means of determining the custody of
children:
"There is no reason to doubt that originally
the common law writ was granted solely in
cases of
arrest and forcible imprisonment under coloror
claim of warrant of law."
"As late as 2 James II, the courtexpressly denied
its allowance in a case of detention or
restraint
by a private person (Rex v. Drake, Comberback
35; 16 Viner 213), and the habeas corpus
act of
Charles II, which is claimed as the Magna
Charta of British liberty, has relation only to
imprisonment on criminal charges. 3 Bac.Ab. 438,
note."
"It is not important to inquire at what period
the writ first was employed to place infant
children under the disposal of courts of law
and equity. This was clearly so in England,
anterior
to our Revolution (Rex v. Smith,2 Strange 982;
Rex v. Delaval, 3 Burrow 1434; Blissets'
Case, Lofft. 748), and the practice has been
fully confirmed in the continued assertion of the
authority by those courts unto the present day
(King v. De Manneville, 5 East. 221; De
Manneville v. De Manneville, 10 Ves. 52; Ball v.
Ball, 2 Sim. 35; Ex ParteSkinner, 9 J. B.
Moore

278; King v. Greenhill, 4 Ad. & El. 624), and
this indifferently, whether the interposition of
the
courtis demanded by the father or mother, 4
Ad. & El. 624, ubi supra; 9 J. B. Moore
278, ubi
supra."
"The authority to take cognizance of the detention of
infants by private persons, not held under
claim or coloror warrant of law, rests solely in
England on the common law. It is one of
the
eminent prerogatives of the Crown, which implies
in the monarch the guardianship of infants
paramount to that of their natural parents. The
royalprerogative at first exercised
personally ad libitum by the King ( 37 U. S.
12 Pet. 630), and afterwards, for his relief,
by special
officers, as the Lord High Constable, the Lord High
Admiral, and the Lord Chancellor, in process
of time devolved upon the high courts of equity
and law, and in them this exalted one, of
allowing and enforcing the writ of habeas corpus ad
subjiciendum, became vested as an
elementary branch of their jurisdiction. In the
performance, however, of this high function in
respect to the detention of infants by parents,
etc., the courtor judge still acts with submission
to the original principle, out of which it sprang,
that infants ought to be left where found,

or be
taken from that custody and transferred to some
otherat the discretion of the prerogative
guardian, and according to its opinion of their best
interest and safety."
It was in the exercise of this jurisdiction as
parens patriae that the present case was heard
and
determined. It is the settled doctrine that, in
such cases, the courtexercises a discretion in
the
interest of the childto determine what care and custody
are best for it in view of its age and
requirements. Such cases are not decided on the
legal right of the petitioner to be relieved
from unlawful imprisonment or detention, as in the
case of an adult, but upon the court's view
of the best interests of those whose welfare
requires that they be in custody of one person
or
another. In such cases, the question
of personal freedom is not involved except in
the sense of a determination as to which
custodian shall have charge of one not entitled to be
freedfrom restraint. As was said by
Sharkey, C.J., in 6 How. (Miss.) 472:
"An infant is not entitled to his freedom; an
adultis. When a habeas corpus is granted
to an
adult, the object is to inquire whether he is
legally restrained of his liberty; because if he
is not,
he must be set free for the plainreason that, by

law, he is entitled to his freedom. But if
the
courtis also to set the infant free, they give him a
right to which he is not entitled, and deprive
the parent or guardian of a right to which he
is entitled -- to-wit, the custody of the
infant."
We thinkthat such considerations as theseinduced
Congress to limit the right of appeal to this
Court in habeas corpus cases. The
discretionary power exercised in rendering the
judgment, the
ability of local tribunals to see and hear the
witnesses and the rival claimants for custody of
children, induced, in our opinion, the denial of
appeal in such cases as the one at bar, as
distinguished from those of a different character,
where personal liberty is really involved,
and
release from illegal restraint -- a high
constitutional and legal right, not resting in
the exercise of
discretion -- is sought, in which an appeal is
given to this Court.
In the present case, therewas no attempt to
illegally wrest the custody of the childfrom its
lawful guardian while temporarily in the
Territory of Arizona. The society voluntarily
took the
childtherewith the intention that it should remain.
Through imposition the childwas placed in

custody of those unfit to receive or maintain
control over it, and, as above stated, came
into
the custody and possession of the respondent.
The childwas within the jurisdiction of the court
under such circumstances that rival claimants
of the right of custody might invoke the
jurisdiction of a competentcourtof the
territory to
determine not the right of personal freedom, but to
which custodian a childof tender years
should be committed. Woodworth v. Spring, 4
Allen, 321.
Page 203 U. S. 441
We do not thinkthat the case comes within the
provisions of § 1909, permitting an
appeal to
this Court only in cases involving the question of
personal freedom.
The appeal will be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.
MR. JUSTICE BREWER took no part in the decision of
this case.
“New York Foundling Hospital v. Gatti.” Justia. U.S. Supreme
Court Decisions. Accessed October 4, 2018.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/203/429/

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