The treatment of children may have been benevolent, but as you will see, not always well-thought out. In April 1904 a few mentions of children were interesting:
During the year of 1904 Bloomington was debating the introduction of kindergarten classes into the public school system. Throughout Illinois there were already 300 kindergartens, with 27,000 students and 700 teachers. Kindergarten was seen as a way to keep children off the street.
On April 7, Miss Bassett, the music teacher for the Bloomington Public Schools and a group of school children provided the entertainment at the Women's Club meeting. Miss Bassett spoke on the importance of musical training at school.
During April two children suffered the loss of one eye (each). Essie Hawks' eye was unaccountably injured during play, and Oscar Burgland's eye was injured by shotgun pellets with which he was shot during play.
A lumiere show called "An Illustrated Magazine" was presented by the Youth Union at the Presbyterian Church on April 13. The young people portrayed advertisements from magazines in silhouette to the delight of the congregation.
On April 16 a message was received from the St. Louis Union Station. A 16 year old girl named Jennie Dulin had been sent on the train from Mississippi by a charitable organization there. She had been deserted by her father in Mississippi and was being returned to her mother in Bloomington. The father and daughter had moved south to look for work and the plan had been to send for the mother later. At press time, Jennie had not been reunited with her mother.
On April 30 Alderman Finnan proposed that the school playgrounds be opened to children during the vacation period. The proposal was adopted, giving children without parks a place to play in the summertime.
On a more humorous note, on April 26 unknown boys opened the window of the Presbyterian church during the evening service and threw a hen into the sanctuary. On April 27 Henry Zolers and Hamilton Boyd were charged with disturbing a religious service.
On April 25, the three year old son of Mr. and Mrs. Hostetter of 903 S. Madison wandered away from his home in the morning, pulling his little wagon behind him. A Mr. Pierce at 1402 West Elm found the little boy outside his house and took the tired little tyke in. He notified the police, but no connection was made between the child found on Elm Street and the lost child from Madison Street until 8 p.m. that evening! The Hostelers were of course elated to be reunited with their child and apparently did not look into the matter very deeply.
A merchant selling marbles was asked about sales in Bloomington and advised that in April, boys have finished with buying marbles because the baseball season draws them away from this pastime. City boys were collectors of carnelians for their shooter marbles and blue and brown "ducks" for the marbles that go into the ring. The merchant had sold thousands of marbles already that year. When boys played marbles it was usually for "keeps," although their mothers almost universally forbade them from playing for keeps. This smacked too much of gambling for the mothers of Bloomington and Normal!
One final and especially wretched story was that of the little Plue girl. Three men were arrested for her rape in April, but no article states the circumstances of the rape or the age of the girl. Later in April, Grace Plue was committed to the Girl's Industrial Home in Geneva, Illinois. Much was made of the fact that this school was not a reformatory, but a haven for the girls. Grace's first days in the school were described. She was taken to the reception flat, where she was given a bath. Then she was medically examined in the hospital. Her first three days were spent in silence, unless a matron or other person in charge spoke to her. This period of silence was thought to curtail any desire to speak of her past life with the other girls in the home. One girl named Grace Plue from Oldtown in the 1900 census would have been eleven or twelve in 1904. In 1910 she was 19 and working as a servant in the home of an Aurora, Illinois family. Whether this is the same Grace Plue cannot be confirmed, but as in Bloomington's Girls Industrial School, girls were indentured away from the institutions as servants when possible and this could have been Grace's fate.