by Anja Eckhard

Did the Mary Ellen case mark the beginning of the worldwide child protection movement? According to the literature, the discovery of maltreatment in New York in 1874 led to the founding of the first organisation for the protection of children. However, the reconstruction of the case shows that after the event in the city, the moral control of the lower class by the upper class was extended rather than the welfare of children improved.

In New York, a poor woman was dying and asked her visitor for one last wish: that she would save the neighbour's child from his brutal parents. Shortly afterwards, the benefactor saw the victim and was horrified by the half-naked, malnourished girl, whose skin was covered in whip marks. Her search for rescue remained unsuccessful for a long time: the authorities, police and courts refused to take jurisdiction, despite the increasing violence against Mary Ellen, the victim's name. In the end, only the president of the animal welfare organisation agreed to help. Convinced that a child had the same right to physical integrity as an animal, he spontaneously took the case to court. In the absence of a legal remedy, Mary Ellen was taken from the family under animal protection laws. The cruel parents received the maximum penalty at the trial. The child was placed in a good home. In order to finally secure the rights previously denied to children by society, an organisation was set up in the courtroom. From then on, this organisation protected children and served as a worldwide, hundredfold model. The Mary Ellen case not only ended the suffering of one child, but also became a positive turning point in the lives of countless children. And if they didn't die ...

The account of the Mary Ellen case is characterised by numerous dramatic elements. In its recorded form, it is a legend. The notion of the existence of a legend has not prevented it from spreading: the case was an extremely brutal abuse that for the first time highlighted the lack of rights and need for protection of children in families and therefore led to the founding of the first child protection organisation. However, the historical function of the legend must be called into question if the case was neither primarily intended to save Mary Ellen, nor was it solely a charitable endeavour to protect children from physical violence in the future. Instead, the case harboured a web of manipulation, calculation and the pursuit of power. The literature and contemporary texts reveal numerous contradictions. The key to understanding the case lies in the historical context of Victorian society after the American Civil War. I have analysed the press coverage of the time, the court records and the accounts of those involved - with surprising results: the information about the case did not only lose its truthfulness over the decades and slowly develop into a legend. Rather, it was deliberately falsified as early as 1874.

In the case of Mary Ellen, it was by no means the case that the plea of a dying woman saved the child. The previously unsuspecting woman reluctantly had her bed moved to the wall next door to serve as an informant. Her demanding visitor was called Etta Angell Wheeler and was one of the rich Protestants who wanted to dissuade the slum population from their Catholic superstition through prayer. They proselytised in large numbers against the sin of self-inflicted poverty. A woman from the neighbouring house had informed Wheeler about the case earlier. As Wheeler was married to a journalist, she was in contact with the media. The press sensationalised the case and, for the first time, paid extensive attention to the suffering of a child. Wheeler asked the popular animal rights activist Henry Bergh for help, a man who had been able to use newspapers for his purposes for years. Alongside the victim, Bergh became a formative figure for the public in the trial.

The rescue operation for Mary Ellen was by no means spontaneous. Bergh instructed his shrewd lawyer Elbridge T. Gerry to carry it out. Both men falsely stated in court that in one day they devised a plan, found a judge willing to support them and a law that provided legal cover for their violent action, tracked down and interviewed twelve witnesses, collected the victim and organised her accommodation, sought evidence and also drafted a petition to the court and notified the press. Although the two openly used their influential animal welfare organisation, they wanted this action to be understood as not only sudden and emotionally driven, but also separate from animal welfare. However, since the founding of their 'Society for the Prevention of Violence against Animals', there have been loud calls for the organisation's remit to be extended to include the protection of children. Years earlier, Bergh and Gerry had successfully taken care of an abused child with great publicity. They then had enough time to search for a suitable law to remove children from their families. The case of Mary Ellen helped Gerry to make a splendid appearance in 1874: he utilised an old section of the 'habeas corpus' law. This was by no means an animal protection law, as legend has it; the ordinance regulated the residence of dependent persons.

During the trial, the press celebrated both men and their rescue of the child. Mary Ellen represented the ideal victim with whom the public could identify: as a young, white, intelligent girl, she was sexually innocent and worthy of protection according to bourgeois values. Bergh and Gerry were the key figures in the production. Bergh used his popularity as a crowd-puller during the trial and his contacts with the newspaper makers ensured that the case received attention. As the prosecutor, Gerry was the tactician and ultimately attained a position of power equivalent to Bergh's: he became president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC).

Even before the trial of Mary Ellen began, Gerry justified the violent rescue of the child from her home. In court, he dramatised the violence by the parents and accused the Connollys of child abduction - a hot topic at the time. It was not a fair trial and the exaggerated accusations can be judged by the fact that all serious charges were dropped. A single assault against Mary Ellen resulted in a conviction. For the child, the Connollys were not a biological family, but foster parents. Initially, the press criticised the authority responsible for relinquishing the child. Gerry directed the criticism solely at the foster mother and also spread the rumour that Mary Ellen was an abandoned baby of prominent parents. In this way, the lawyer aimed to gain the sympathy of the middle-class public, who were supposed to see the victim as one of their own. As the Connollys were poor, a police court would have been responsible. Through his influence, Gerry managed to get the case heard in the Supreme Court - where he was sure of a middle-class audience. Although there was enough time, Mary Ellen was neither washed nor re-dressed for her first appearance in court. The drama was intentional. Optics played an important role in the course of the trial: the victim was transformed from a 'Cinderella' into a 'princess'. This staging was also successful, the newspapers paid attention to every detail of Mary Ellen's appearance. Not only was the abuse exaggerated, but the prosecution also played the victim's alleged testimony to the media. Apparently some saw through Gerry's game: one newspaper noted that the lawyer had helped with the maudlin words.

Although both Connollys were accused and labelled a danger to the child's life and limb, only the foster mother was charged. Gerry was able to use her as a scapegoat because the woman carried numerous stigmas: she was poor, Catholic, an immigrant from Europe and sexually active, and therefore 'virtueless'. Gerry openly declared that he wanted to make an example of her as a warning to violent parents. The guilt of the foster father was ignored - perhaps to conceal sexual violence against the daughter, but this answer remains speculative. Basically, the aspect of 'sexuality' runs through this production like a red thread, also because the accusation was directed solely against the woman. Although she stood up to the accuser Gerry, it was the weaker part of the couple that was brought to court. Under indictment, Mrs Connolly reported on Mary Ellen's origins, her good relationship with the child and her sexual relationship with her husband, and denied all the offences with which she was charged. The press marvelled at the fearlessness with which the victim confronted the woman. However, they agreed with the opinion of the prosecution, who saw the foster mother as a 'brutal, heartless monster'; a view that was easy to convey to the public due to her loud, vulgar and self-confident demeanour. The roles in the trial were clearly divided, the 'bad' woman was opposed by the 'good' Wheeler, Bergh and Gerry.

Despite all the manipulations, a more lenient sentence was imposed than the prosecution had demanded. The jury thus followed the defence's suggestion. The convicted woman served one year in an institution for less serious offences. Mary Ellen's subsequent whereabouts remain unclear; she was probably placed in a police reception centre for street children. Despite numerous offers of adoption, eight months later she was placed in an institution for poor, disabled and criminal orphans. It was no coincidence that this was publicised on the day the SPCC was founded. In the future, the organisation would present the case as its first successful intervention in a violent family. Wheeler later placed Mary Ellen with her relatives and from then on regarded her as an object of study and a role model, frequently publicising her part in their rescue. Wheeler in turn served as a 'female figurehead' for the SPCC, which did not tolerate women as members for over five decades. With her connection to Mary Ellen, the woman symbolised the beginning of the SPCC.

The thesis argues that the case of Mary Ellen alone was not the beginning of the child protection movement. The contradictions that arose and the staging of the case led to this realisation. The social-historical categorisation of the 'Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children', which was founded at the time, was particularly groundbreaking. The SPCC was one of New York's four 'Preventive Societies', closely interwoven with each other and set apart from the charitable competition. They worked in social niches and exerted influence on the 'immoral vices' of the poor. In one organisation, Anthony Comstock led the marking of obscene written and pictorial material, Bergh's objective was to moderate the treatment of animals, Gerry claimed to protect children from the sins of adults and in the fourth organisation Howard Crosby fought the business of sin. Their field of action was the slums with the entertainment and private spaces of the lower classes. Their protagonists were all male and politically conservative, mostly Protestant and wealthy. They built up a network in politics, the media, industry and the judiciary to monitor their Victorian moral concepts in New York: most people came to this city from overseas. The reformers were 'at war' with immigrants; they saw them as Europe's 'refuse'. Immigration was to be controlled, as the newcomers brought crime, alcohol, poverty and commercial pleasure into the country with their foreign customs and traditions.

The SPCC played a special role among the preventive societies in that it had the most extensive powers to intervene in the private sphere of families. It controlled parents and carers whose poverty and foreign values were seen as a threat to the growing generation. The 'future of America' had to be protected. Even before the Civil War, there were regulations to improve the situation of children in institutions and working conditions, as well as measures to get them off the streets and onto farms. On the surface, the SPCC extended existing protective measures to include children in families who had been beaten. However, despite the name 'for the prevention of violence against children', the organisation was not primarily concerned with preventing maltreatment. There was a lack of interest in the welfare and immediate future of their clients. The children were placed in institutions whose quality was already deplored at the time. The strict refusal to take educational responsibility for children earned the SPCC a reputation as the 'feeder of the institutions'. It accumulated economic power by controlling institutionalisation.

All four preventative societies acted arbitrarily and, with political and legal approval, took the law into their own hands, for which they were feared by the underclass - the SPCC was popularly known as 'The Cruelty'. Always under the guise of protecting the rights of children, brothels, pubs, theatres and museums were closed down. The legal basis that the SPCC created over the years reflected its actual objective - only a few texts dealt with physical violence against children at all. Like its sister organisations, the SPCC mainly disciplined adults from the lower classes. This first child protection organisation in New York tore poor families apart. It worked differently from the SPCCs of the same name that followed it. Gerry's SPCC aimed primarily at the moral and social control of the poor population. The other organisations gave charitable help to families in grade. Only the name of the first organisation in New York was their inspiration. The investigation of the individual case showed that Mary Ellen served only as a puppet for the actors and that her welfare was of no concern to those pulling the strings. The legend surrounding the case was traced back to its roots. In a broader sense, however, the event was a catalyst for people to take a closer look at children's rights - for further research in this regard, one would have to leave New York.

The author

Dr Anja Eckhard (30) completed her doctorate on the 'Mary Ellen case' at the Institute for Educational Sciences at the University of Oldenburg. As a graduate of the department, she spent ten months researching at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education (USA), funded by the DAAD. After completing her dissertation, she worked for the Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich and for NDR radio in Hamburg. She now lives as a freelance journalist in Braunschweig.