From our archives, 100 years ago

“No child should be whipped!”

That was the basis of an impassioned address to the Juvenile Protective Association delivered by Mrs. G.M. Ellis.

Ellis said she had studied the subject for 21 years and was adamant against corporal punishment.

“A sensitive child is cowed by whipping and made a coward, while a child of strong nature is stirred to revenge,” Ellis told a crowd of 50.

She also gave her theories about why children turn out to be delinquent.

“The great majority of degenerate children are the offspring of parents tainted with alcoholism or chronic disease,” she said. “The offspring of alcoholic parents are apt to be neurasthenic or afflicted with some other nervous disorder which may in the end lead them into a life of crime or to the insane asylum.”

She said humane treatment in a proper environment was the best way to bring out the best in these children. She said she had visited a boy in the prison at Walla Walla who, at age 12, had murdered his mother. He was “responding and developing under humane treatment.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1860: Former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln defeated three other candidates for the presidency: John Breckinridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas.