Document text
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
FORM A
Circumstances of Interview
Illinois
Hilda POlacheok
1410 Bast 67th Street
April 13, 1939
The Hull...House Devil Baby
1. Date and time of interview..
2. Place of interview.,
Hull -Rouse
3. Name and address of informant
Personal contact
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant,.
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number tb which the material refers.)
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
No. Words
MOO
FOLKLORE
FORM C
Text of Interview (Undited)
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER. Hilda Polacheck
ADDRESS 1410 East 67th Street
DATE April 13, 1939
SUBJECT The Hull ..House Devil Baby
NAME OF INFORMANT
The Hull...Haus. Devil Baby
CHICAGO
No. Words
The story of the Hull -House Devil Baby was created in the spring
of 1913, by three Italian women. These women rushed into the reception
room, demanding to see the Devil Baby. When they were told that they
must be mistaken, that no one in the house had seen a Devil Baby, they
insisted that the baby was there. They proceeded to describe the baby
minutely. Be had cloven hoofs, pointed ears and a very short tail.
That he was able to talk the minute he was born and that he swore at
his father. That he had taken the cigar out of his father's mouth and
smoked it. That he had been seen riding in a red automobile.
If the automobile and the cigar had not been introduced into the
story, it sounded like some thing that might have been invented thousands
of years ago,
The three Italian women were followed by thousands of people who
oame from all parts of Chicago and its suburbs to see the Devil Baby.
Letters were received at ilull-House from people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
asking if they could organise delegations to see the Devil Baby. They
were willing to pay any price that hull -Rouse might want to charge.
FORM C TEXT
CHICAGO FOLKS TUFF
The tale of the Devil Baby lasted six meeks. For five weeks
it remained an old elves tale passed on by word of mouth from one
person to another. During the sixth week, the newspapers got hold
of it, and printed the story.
Each person who repeated the story, had a different version
of how the baby happened to be born. The stories varied with the
religion of the person who was telling it.
The Italian version was about a good, pious Italian girl, who
made the horrible mistake of marrying an atheist. One day, just
before her baby was to be born, the young wife hung a holy picture
on the mall of her bedroom. When the husband came home, he tore
the holy picture from the wall shouting that he would rather have
a devil in the house than this picture. Right then and there, the
devil incarnated himself in the ooming child. When the baby was
born, it had all the features of the devil. He could run the minute
he was born. He ran around the table shaking his finger at his father.
The father, in great fear, caught him and brought him to Hull -House.
The Irish version of the story was that a girl had had an affair
with a man before she was married to her husband, and that she had
failed to confess the affair to the priest. When her baby was born,
it was the Devil Baby. The father had brought the baby to Hull -House.
Several of the residents decided to take the baby to church to have it
baptised, in spite of its appearance. As they stood before the priest,
and were about to take the baby from the shawl in which it was wrapped,
they found that the shawl was empty. They soon heard a fiendish laugh,
FCak C TEXT .2
CHICAGO FOLKSTUIT
and loOkihg around, they sew the Devil Baby running over the pews
in the back of the church.
There were many Jewish versions. One was to the effect that
the father of six daughters had quarreled with his wife the day
before the seventh child was born. In a fit of anger the father
had said that he would rather have a devil in the family than
another girl. No sooner had the father uttered these unholy words, when
the Devil Baby appeared.
Two Jewish women came to Hull -House demanding to see the Devil
Baby. I asked them 'shore they had heard that there was a Devil Baby
at hull -house. They told me this fantastic tale: The daughter of
very pious Jewish parents had run off and married a gentile. The
parents heard that their daughter was about to have a baby and the
pious father in a moment of grief uttered the unholy hope that the
child would be a devil. And sure enough, when the baby was born, it
was the Devil Baby. The young mother had been attending classes at
Hull -House before her marriage, so she implored her husband to take
the baby to Hull -House and leave it there.
This version was told to me by a neighbor: She knew definitely
that the Devil Ilaby was at Hull -house. Her daughter and a friend who
was about to become a mother had gone to the opera laust. The daughter
had told the -:other all about the devil in the opera. She
gyms sure that
the expectant mother had looked at the devil too intently, and when her
baby was born, it was the Devil aby. The visiting nurse who had come
to look after the mother, had taken the baby to Hull -House.
FORY C
CHICAGO FOLKSTUii-
This neighbor implored ma to use my influence at Hull -House, so that
she could see the Devil Baby. When T told her that there was no
Devil Baby, she exploded with the choicest assortment of curses I had
ever heard. She accused everybody at hull -house of being unfair to
the poor. She had heard definitely that the baby was shown to people
stho could afford to pay big prices to see it.
There is a bur among orthodox Jews that if a husband dies and
does 14ot leave any children, his widow must marry his brother, if there
is one, or ret a special dispensation from the Rabbi. The story con-
cocted by one old woman was that a young widow married a man without
getting the dispensation. Y210.: her first child was born, i t was the
,evil Baby.
Still another story c,noerned the birth of the first child of a
fft ily. The law decrees -,,hat if a first child is a son, and his father
is not a Cohan, or tae child's maternal grandfather is not a Cohan,
that the child must be redeemed by the payment of any sum of money to
the Rabbi, one month after the birth of the child. The story in this
instance was that when the Rabbi asked the young mother whether this
wFs her first child, she said yes. but the mother was really concealing
the fact that she had given birth to an illegitimate child. Whe_ her
next child was born, it 'sae the Devil Baby.
One of the reasons for the ad rus- to see the Devil -riaby, was
that tne old women rvantec to impress their children with the moral of
the story. It was a vivid and dramatic way of showing what it means
to stray from the fold. Then there were -any women who had been abused
FORM C TEXT -4-
CliIGAGO FOLLSTUFF
by their husbands for not having children of the right sex. This
may have led to the invention of the story.
This method of pointing out a moral lesson to children, can be
compared to the incident when John Lillinger wasehot by the 0 men.
This story was told to me by a woman. I cannot vouch for its vera-
city. The newspapers reported that the body of Dillinger was taken
to a certain undertaking establishment on Sheridan Road. An hour
after the papers caste out on the street, a woman, holding a little boy
by the hand, caste to the mortuary and wanted to know how much the under-
taker would charge for a look at the dead gangster. The body had not
as yet arrived from the city morgue, but the undertaker in jest, said
he would charge twenty-five cents. The woman opened her purse and
iroduced the quarter, asking if she had to pay for her little boy.
The undertaker then told the woman that she could look at the
casket, as he was not allowed to open it till the gangster's rela-
tives arrived. The woman hesitated, but paid the quarter to see the
casket. her reason for doing this, was to show her small son what
happened to men who became gangsters.
For two days people paid their quarters to see the casket.
The line of people would form early in the morning. A ten year old
girl told me that she and her mother stood in line all morning waiting
for a chance to see the casket. At noon the were hungry, so the mother
went home and brought some sandwiches and milk, which she and the child
ate. They did not want to give up their places in the line.
FORM C TEXT -5..
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
that motives prompted thousands of people to become hysterically
curious to see the Devil Baby or a deadgangster? Had the daily events
of their lives touched them so little, that they were milling to pay for
the privilege of seeing something ghastly or supernatural, just as normal
people would pay for the privilege of hearing an opera or concert, or
seeing a play?
Jane Addams answers these questions with keen understanding:
"During the weeks of excitement it was the old women who really
seened to have come into their awn, and perhaps the most significant
result of the incident was the reaction of the story upon them. It
stirred their minds and memory as with a magic touoh, it loosened their
tongues and revealed the inner life and thoughts of Lhose who are so
often inarticulate. They are accustomed t, sit at home and to hear the
younger members of the family speak of affairs quite outside their own
experiences sometimes in a language they do not understand e
4110 1•11.
In many cases the wonen uno had heel-, reveling in the "existence"
of the Devil Baby, as the one great adventure ia their lives, seemed
utterly crushed, when they were finally convinced that there was no
Devil Baby. The Italian, Irish and Jewish women were the nest pathetic.
Inany of these women lived in a world of their awn. They had grown up on
fantastic stories of miracles and the supernatural. Their being trans-
planted to a
the place of
They took no
of the Devil
new and strange country, did not give them anything to take
these stories. They lived in a world devoid of adventure.
part in the life of Chicano. lo these people the advent
naby was a thrillifn adventure. In many oases the residents
FORM C TEXT -6-
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
of hull -House and the people employed there, were tempted to allow
these women to go on believing that the Devil Baby really existed.
--It seemed hard to shatter a belief that transformed tired dull faces
into radiant ones.
The story of the Devil Baby reached remote places. One day
a woman living on Folk Street visited an inmate of the poorhouse and
in hushed tones told of the existence of the Devil Baby. As there is
no place in the world more desolate and devoid of entertainment than a
ward in the poor -house, the story was often repeated by the women to
whom it had been told.
One of the inmates, a crippled old women was seised with the desire
to see the Devil Baby. She felt that she would have something to talk
about for the rest of her days. She lay awake nights figuring how she
could get to hull -House to have this unheard of thrill. She had not even
ten cents for car -fare. She thought of a friendly bartender in the saloon
across the street from the poor -house. In the morning she asked him to
give her the ten cents, for which she offered to describe the Devil Baby
in detail to him. The bartender agreed to let her have the dime, and he
and the conductor lifted her into the street -ear. She arrived at Bull
House, worn out with the trip.
She told a tale about her grandmother having had second sight and
being able to see into the future. That she had on several occasions fore-
told the death of various members of the family. The poor cripple went
FORM C TEXT -7..
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
on to say that her mother had heard the banshee several times.
Once the poor emaciated woman had even heard the banshee herself.
She gave the feeling to her listeners that she was relate to the
Devil Baby. She was sure she could tell just as soon as she IIILW it,
how it happened to be born. We listened to the woman and postponed
telling her that there
implicit belief in the
Someone brought a
was no Devil Baby. We were fascinated with her
supernatural.
tray with tea and cake and the poor woman was
served while she talked. She had probably not seen cake for a long
time, but it was hard to decide whether the oake made any impression.
Her whole beinc seemed to be lifted to a higher plane by the thought
of the Devil Baby.
It was a crushing blow when she was finally told that there was
no Devil Baby. She sat for a while mumbling to herself. Then we
took her to the street oar, gave her a little money and sent her back
to the poorhouse.