The house in which lived the Herriges family is a little two storied frame
building or more properly shanty, rickety and poverty stricken in its
appearance, more resembling the abodes of the denizens of Baker street
slums than the home of persons of real wealth as it really is. It stands
on the northeast corner of Fourth and Lombard streets, in Philadelphia.
Immediately to the north of it is an extensive soap boiling establishment,
while directly adjoining it in the east are some frame shanties still
smaller and more delapidated than itself, and which, belonging to the
Herriges also, were rented by Joseph Herriges, the accused, for a most
exhorbitant sum. To the credit of the occupants of these shanties, we must
say that by means of whitewash they have made them look far preferable to
that of their landlord--at least in appearance.
On the north of the soap boiling establishment referred to stretches the
burial ground of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, with its hundreds of
monuments and green graves, while on the opposite side of Fourth street
lies the burial ground of the Old Pine Street Church, with its almost
numberless dead.
The writer of this recollects years ago, when a boy, often passing and
repassing the Herriges house, and noticing on account of its forlorn
appearance and the comical Dutch Pompey which stood upon the wooden
pedestal at the door to indicate the business of a tobacconist.
How little he thought when contemplating it, that a human being languished
within its dingy wooden walls, in a condition worse than that of the
worst-cared-for brutes.
A fact in connection with this case is remarkable, which is this. On a
Sabbath morning there is no one spot in the whole city of Philadelphia,
standing on which, you can hear so many different church bells at once, or
so many different choirs singing the praises of Almighty God. And on every
returning Sunday the poor prisoner's ears drank in the sacred harmony. God
knows perhaps at such times the angels ministered to him in his dismal
cage, sent thither with sunshine that could not be shut out by human
monsters. Think of it, reader, a thousand recurring Sabbaths found the
poor young imbecile growing from youth to a dreadfully premature old age.
The mind staggers to think of it. Could we trace day by day the long
wearisome hours of the captive's life, how terrible would be the journey.
We should hear him sighing for the bright sun light that made the grave
yard green and clothed all the monuments in beautiful flowers. How he
would prize the fragrance of a little flower, condemned as he was to smell
nothing but the dank, noisome effluvia of the soap boiler's factory.
Hope had no place in his cramped, filthy cage. No genius but that of
Dispair ever found tenement in the grimed little room.
But though so long, oh, so long, Liberty came at last, and the pining boy,
now an old man, was set free, through the agency of a poor, but noble
woman, Mrs. Gibson, who had the heart to feel and the bravery to rescue
from his hellish bondage the unfortunate.