In 1922, an 85-year-old woman was discovered in the cellar of a house. Located in a miner’s town, the cellar was dark, cold, and damp. The only light the prisoner saw was through the coal shaft where spoiled food was sent down to barely keep her alive.
Is Prisoner in Cellar 2 Years
Mahanoy City, Pa. – With rats and mice as her only companions and starved almost to a living skeleton, an eighty-year-old woman was dragged forth from a damp, dark, dirty cellar, where she has spent the last two years as a prisoner at the hands of her daughter and son-in-law.
For no other reason apparently than that she was in the way, the old woman had been locked in her cellar-dungeon and fed only scraps of food and bits of nourishment scarcely fit for the lowest animal to eat for almost twenty-four months, while her daughter and husband lived in considerable comfort in the house above her.
When found the miserable old prisoner snarled at Chief of Police A.P. McLaughlin, clawed at him with her bird-like talons in the fear that he had come to do her greater harm. She had to be taken from the black hole virtually by force, screaming and screeching when taken into the light of day despite her feeble strength.
Ignorant Refugees’ Belief
The mother, whose terrible imprisonment and pitiable condition became known to the police here after repeated anonymous hints and suggestions from residents of the neighborhood, is Mrs. Stephen Navilsky, of Russian birth. No details concerning the reason for her daughter’s actions could be obtained from her, so terrified was she at the sight of strangers and so tangled her mind at the realization of liberty.
According to other Russian residents in the neighborhood, however, the police gained the information that the foreigners in the coal fields hereabouts look upon old age as a hideous thing and upon death as something to be shunned and avoided at all costs. In many instances, it was said, foreign-born families have refused to receive the bodies of relatives killed in the mines, so terrified were they at the sight of the Grim Reaper.
On this supposition, therefore, it is believed by the police that the woman’s daughter and the daughter’s husband, seeing old age and inevitable death approaching in Mrs. Navilsky’s case, decided to safeguard their own happiness by putting her out of their sight.
Month after month passed and the old woman lived on until there was nothing to do, the police believe, but to hide the aged victim away in the cellar.
Door Bolted on Her
Forthwith, she was pushed down the stairs, and the door bolted on her, not to be unbolted for almost two years. Such food as was given her at various intervals was thrust to her, the police believe, through a tiny coal hole into the cellar, which incidentally, admitted the only ray of light that penetrated the place.
There, virtually in continual night, the poor old woman spent her days, gnawing at the molding morsels passed to her as food, sleeping when she could on the filthy pile of rags and old newspaper she had huddled in one corner of her prison.
Source: The St. Charles herald. (Hahnville, La.), 11 Nov. 1922.
