Gates of steel never have held her in jail or asylum. In the mightier
penitentiaries she has made herself such an uncontrolled fury
by night--sleeping calmly all day long and resting for the next
seance--that penitentiary gates have opened for her in the hope of
having her maintained as an asylum ward. After which "Fainting Bertha"
has secured keys to asylum doors and gone her untrammeled way straight
back to a police record which for years has shown her to be one of the
most remarkable pickpockets, diamond snatchers and shoplifters of her
time.
Making such a nuisance of herself in the penitentiary as no longer to
be tolerated in a refined convict community, she proves her madness.
In the locked, barred, asylum she proves her cunning at escape. And,
once more at liberty, the abandon with which she goes after personal
property in any form, at any time and under any circumstances, proves
her skill as a thief and her unbalance in the "get away."
There is her escape from the asylum at Elgin on the night of December
25, 1904. Christmas eve she had fainted in the arms of an attendant
and in the scurrying which followed had secured the keys to the gates.
On the night of Christmas she went out of the Elgin asylum, boarded an
electric car for Aurora and bought a railroad ticket to Peoria.