es: "Here we have a feeble-minded woman [IV, 3] who has
had three husbands (including one 'who was not her husband'), and the
result has been nothing but feeble-minded children. The story may be
told as follows:
"This woman was a handsome girl, apparently having inherited some
refinement from her mother, although her father was a feeble-minded,
alcoholic brute. Somewhere about the age of seventeen or eighteen she
went out to do housework in a family in one of the towns of this State
[New Jersey]. She soon became the mother of an illegitimate child. It
was born in an almshouse to which she fled after she had been
discharged from the home where she had been at work. After this,
charitably disposed people tried to do what they could for her, giving
her a home for herself and her child in return for the work which she
could do. However, she soon appeared in the same condition. An effort
was then made to discover the father of this second child, and when he
was found to be a drunken, feeble-minded epileptic living in the
neighborhood, in order to save the legitimacy of the child, her
friends [_sic_] saw to it that a marriage ceremony took place. Later
another feeble-minded child was born to them. Then the whole family
secured a home with an unmarried farmer in the neighborhood. They
lived there together until another child was forthcoming which the
husband refused to own. When, finally, the farmer acknowledged this
child to be his, the same good friends [_sic_] interfered, went into
the courts and procured a divorce from the husband, and had the woman
married to the father of the expected fourth child. This proved to be
feeble-minded, and they have had four other feeble-minded children,
making eight in all, born of this woman. There have also been one
child stillborn and one miscarriage.
"As will be seen from the chart, this woman had four feeble-minded
brothers and sisters [IV, 6, 10, 15, 16]. These are all married and
have children. The older of the two sisters had a child by her own
father, when she was thirteen years old. The child died at about six
years of age. This woman has since married. The two brothers have each
at least one child of whose mental condition nothing is known. The
other sister married a feeble-minded man and had three children. Two
of these are feeble-minded and the other died in infancy. There were
six other brothers and sisters that died in infancy."
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--Family histor
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