Lou’s View – August 27, 2015
The Insane Prisoner
By Lou Bernard
I was just minding my own business, going through the old microfilm at the Ross Library, when I spotted it. April 13, 1928. Front page. The headline: “Insane Prisoner Wrecks Cell In Clinton County Jail.” And in the second paragraph down, it mentions that Henry Shoemaker was involved.
Well. There’s just no way I’m passing that up.
Ralph Miller was forty years old. He had a wife and seven children. He worked as a tenant farmer for Henry Wharton Shoemaker. So, of course, did practically everyone in Wayne Township in that era. Shoemaker was a writer and editor who owned a lot of property out in McElhattan. He employed a lot of people. With that sort of track record, sooner or later at least one of them was bound to turn out to be a little crazy.
It began slowly, and then rapidly escalated. Miller just happened to mention to his wife one Thursday that he was the Savior, the son of God. You’d think the wife might have remembered having God as her father-in-law, but it didn’t ring any bells. She began to get somewhat unnerved—The newspaper says “His actions alarmed his family”—And tried to calm him down. The calming thing didn’t really work well, and Miller began to preach the Gospels.
Then, having frightened his family enough for one day, Miller hit the town. He strode through McElhattan, preaching to anyone he came into contact with. There’s only just so long you can do that before someone notifies the authorities, which is exactly what happened.
Police Chief J.E. Harvey was called, and arrived with local doctor Graydon Mervine. Since Harvey technically had no jurisdiction outside of Lock Haven, he brought along Sheriff Irvin Wenker, which made a pretty good posse to go and pick up Miller, bringing him back to the local jail on Church Street and locking him up there. This was actually a pretty progressive treatment for mental illness at the time, as the usual method was to attach leeches to your eyes or something.
Miller spent the evening praying, and then steadily became more and more violent as the night went on. He went from praying to cursing, and then graduated to ripping the toilet off the floor, which I don’t remember ever happening in the New Testament. Water rushed out of the pipes and ran through the floor, damaging the plaster in the cells below.
Miller continued, bending his iron bed clean in half. This would have been thought impossible before, so maybe he did have God on his side. Then he ripped his mattress to shreds, throwing them out onto the floor in the corridor. He smashed the window of his cell and tore the frame loose, and when the sheriff’s son came with food, Miller threw it back on him.
Miller refused to eat or drink anything, which didn’t seem to tire him out any. He pulled an iron rod from the wrecked bed and threatened to use it to kill anyone who came close, which nobody had much desire to do at this point. Local doctor William Welliver came with a sedative, but it had no effect on Miller.
Miller continued to cause a ruckus until Friday evening at about nine PM, when Welliver gave him another shot. This one put him out for a few hours, but he woke up around three-thirty the next morning. By that point, the sheriff had removed everything from the cell while Miller was asleep, so all he could do was shout and rattle the bars.
Doctor Mervine came back to examine Miller, bringing along Doctor Theodore Teah, a kindly local doctor who had his own hospital at the corner of Main and First Streets. They spoke to Miller, and then signed an official document that could be summed up as saying,”Yep, he’s insane, allright.”
Two local officials, William Shurr of Wayne Township and David Probst of Lock Haven, put Miller into a car and took him to Danville, where he was committed. And, presumably, the sheriff cleaned up and replaced everything in the cell, now that Miller was gone and out of his hair. And all this without asking Miller to perform so much as one little miracle.
