There are reasons why children today find cellars so creepy. For one, people would often place dead bodies in the cellar for safe keeping until they could be given a proper burial. Also, there were plenty of deceased children buried in the dirt floors of old cellars. Sadly enough, there were cases where children were kept in cellars as punishment.
1. The Ugly Duckling of the Family
Marie Zumback of Joliet, Illinois never had a chance to have a normal life. A little over a year after she was born, her mother decided that the girl was going to be the ugly duckling of her five children and sent the child down into the cellar. Kept from sight and sunlight, the girl lived in the basement for seventeen years. At age eighteen, she was discovered by welfare workers in 1920.
The girl was described as having “the mentality of a baby of two and the physical proportions of a girl of eight.”
But not to worry. The doctors and scientists of the time had a fresh new hell in store for the girl. In an attempt to make young Marie “normal,” they inserted a monkey thyroid gland into her neck. [1]
2. Covered in Rat Bites
Luigi Iannichelli, for whatever reason, kept his little daughter in the cellar under the drug store where he worked in NYC. When the seven-year-old child was found in 1896, she was without any clothing. Rat bites covered her arms, legs, and torso.
Her father was arrested for inhumanity. At court, he was sentenced to merely one year in jail and given a $400 fine. [2]
3. Burnt the Tip of His Nose
Five-year-old George Wyrth was discovered in a damp and dark basement in NYC, 1911, after a water inspector heard the child’s cries.
The police were called to the scene and the padlocked cellar door was broken down. The police took the child to the station where they learned that the boy was being punished because he was playing with matches. The father had caught the boy in the act, lit a match to the child’s nose, burnt the end of the boy’s nose, and then locked him in the cellar.
The child was placed with the Children’s Society while the police searched for the missing father. [3]
4. Mentally Abnormal
In 1922, it was reported that nineteen-year-old Mary Devine had spent two years of her life living in the cellar of her parents’ home. When she was discovered, the girl was wearing rags that barely covered her and her body was covered in bruises from beatings. Mary was filthy and covered in dirt from not bathing for the two years of her imprisonment.
According to young Mary, “My mother didn’t want the neighbors to see me and she didn’t like me. I spent almost all the time in the cellar, except when mother was sure there would be no visitors and then she made me scrub floors, carry coal and chop wood. My bed was an old cot, and the chickens and ducks slept with me.”
Mary was taken from her parents’ home and her parents were charged with disorderly conduct. [4]
5. Cellar Dungeon
Over and over, neighbors heard the cry of a child coming from a house in Syracuse, NY back in 1922. The police were called and they broke down the door to the home’s cellar.
Inside the cellar was an awful sight. A little boy, Kenneth Vernier, was discovered. The five-year-old was laying in a box of old rags near the furnace. He was all bones, having been starved, and his bare legs trembled and shook.
Upon further investigation into the case, it was discovered that the boy had been kept in the cellar, alone in the dark, for five months.
Surprisingly, there were eleven other children in the family and the father was a well paid construction engineer. The other children were well dressed and fed.
When asked why the boy was so cruelly treated, the father replied, “Kenneth was kept in the cellar because he was obstinate and would not keep clean and neat like his brothers and sisters… I don’t say that I was entirely satisfied when the boy was kept downstairs in an effort to teach him habits of decency parents expect of a child. None of the others were slovenly. The got so that they wouldn’t even sleep in the same room with him because of his habits.”
The parents were arrested. [5]
