As a last resort the tortured prison officials at Joliet, taking
the diagnosis of Physician Fletcher, sent her to the care of Supt.
Podstata at the Elgin asylum. There, after consultation of the asylum
physicians, it was found that she should have been confined in an
asylum for the feebleminded when she was younger; that, lacking this
treatment, she had grown and developed such destructive tendencies
that a hospital for the insane was the only haven for her.
But Bertha escaped from the asylum, which has for its safeguards
the lock and the steel bar. Locks and bars are nothing to "Fainting
Bertha"! She was recaptured and returned, only that she might escape
again on Christmas night, finding her way to Peoria, where her
escapades in going through the town were marvels to the Peoria police.
The conductor on the Peoria train from whom she took $30 has not
claimed his money. But half a dozen stores in which she operated and
the salesman from whose samples in the Fey Hotel she took hundreds of
dollars worth of silks, jewelry, clothing and perfumes got back some
of the plunder, which detectives found piled around her in a chair car
in an Omaha train.
The Peoria police locked her up, and while the charges rested Dr.
Zeller, of the asylum for the incurable insane at South Bartonville,
asked of Dr. Podstata and the penitentiary authorities the custody
of "Fainting Bertha." Warden Murphy at Joliet was delighted at the
idea. Supt. Podstata at Elgin was as greatly pleased. Dr. Zeller at
South Bartonville Asylum for the Incurable Insane, receiving the young
woman, was conscious of having a unique addition to the 1,929 other
inmates of his barless cottages of detention. In the history of the
South Bartonville asylum only one female inmate has escaped, and she
was found dead soon afterwards in a ravine into which she had fallen.