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Portland Daily Press
Saturday, 30 September 1882

         
         BRUTAL PARENTS
         
         Trial of the Fort Fairfield Ill-Treatment Case
           BEAN and his Wife Sentenced to Jail for
            Inhuman Cruelty to Two Children.
            
         The Supreme Judicial Court is now sitting at Houlton,
       Appleton, C. J., presiding. The interesting cases of
       the term have been idictments against JAMES BEAN and
       his wife, NORA BEAN, of Fort Fairfield, for ill-treat-
       ment of his two daughters, BELL, aged 9, and INEZ, aged
       7, the step-daughters of NORA, his second wife. For
       some time previous to last April, the neighbors began
       to suspect something wrong in the matter; an appeal
       was made to the Selectmen; and last April BEAN and
       his wife after preliminary examination, were bound
       over and have been in custody ever since that time.
       It is now rumored that the BEANS are not bearing
       their true name; that his name in New Hampshire,near
       Derry, whence he emigrated to Fort Fairfield, was
       GEORGE MORSE. When the children were taken from their
       log cabin home, they were weak, sickly, emaciated,
       ragged and filthy, their bodies bearing marks of re-
       peated whippings and many scars, sores and wounds.
         The children were on the stand and testified to
       having been tied up and whipped cruelly, made to
       sleep in the barn, and to remain out of doors in
       the cold, to having their hands thrust against a
       hot stove and burned and to being tortured in many
       other ways. Most of this was done by MRS. BEAN. Her
       husband treated them rather more mildly.
         Chief Justic Appleton, in pronouncing sentence on
       the woman, said he had rarely seen such cruelty,
       particularly in the treatment of children, and that
       from a woman and mother, it showed a hardness of
       heart and almost a devilish temper and disposition.
       The officers of the town did their duty in investi-
       gating it and in seeing that the crime should be
       judicially examined and that any party guilty of it
       should receive punishment. The judge imposed a sent-
       ence of three months on each indictment, six months
       in all, taking in account the sentence that she had
       already been imprisoned five months, making eleven
       months in all. In passing sentence upon the father
       he said he thought the wife was the more guilty,
       but he must have known how the children were treated;
       it was his duty to know it. He received a sentence
       of five months.
         The children under the care of MR. BAKER, one of
       the fathers of the town, and his worthy wife, show
       the results of kind treatment on children. They
       appear clean, well-mannered, intelligent and truth-
       ful. The older was a little more inclined than the
       younger sister to screen her father, a pardonable
       weakness, truly, and on cross-examination they both
       responded affirmatively to the question whether they
       loved their father.
       
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