We wonder always what the result is when a girl is orphaned and placed in an orphanage. But what happens when she is put out of the orphanage? Like the many children nowadays that go through the foster system who find themselves without financial or emotional support after "aging out" what happened to the grown orphans?
A police blotter from the Pantagraph one hundred years ago today gives us a clue. Harry Gray was arrested for "disorderly conduct." He was reported by H M Kerrick, attorney for the Humane Society. Mr. Gray was living at 316 W Prairie with a girl to whom he was not married. Neighbors were concerned for her because she was an orphan girl who had come to Bloomington as a domestic servant and Harry Gray had influenced her to live with him. The neighbors felt that she was "unsophisticated" and unable to properly judge her position. Perhaps these neighbors rescued her from a situation in which she would later become responsible for a child and have no support from the father, or perhaps they were merely looking out for the taxpayers and did not desire to have the situation devolve into one that would require the spending of tax dollars.