
The Devil Baby of Hull House
#1
Posted 05 November 2005 - 10:16 PM
In 1889, in Chicago’s Near West Side, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded the Hull House, which became a world famous settlement house for the poor immigrants of the area, a densely populated urban neighborhood peopled by Italian, Irish, German, Greek, Bohemian, and Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants.
The Hull-House residents provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; and theater, music and art classes. As the complex expanded to include thirteen buildings, Hull-House supported more clubs and activities such as a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and a wide array of cultural events.
In the early 20th century (some accounts give the year of 1913, others no specific year), a rumour began to spread through the Near West Side that a hideously deformed infant had been left on the doorstep of Hull House. This poor infant, so it was sworn, was the son of the Devil Himself! He had horns, a tail, pointed ears, cloven feet, scaly skin, he could walk, talk and fly about within moments of his birth! People came from all over, to glimpse this horror, swamping Hull House with requests and demands to see the child of the Devil.
There are several stories about just how the Devil Baby came to be, and the tale depended on which ethnic group was telling it. According to the Catholic Italians and Irish, a girl married an Atheist. When she was pregnant, she hung a painting of the Virgin Mary, and her husband tore it down, swearing he’d rather have the Devil for a child than a religious painting in his house. According to the Jewish residents of the area, the Devil Baby was the result of a woman who lied to the Rabbi and claimed her second child as her first born, not mentioning an earlier child born out of wedlock. Her next child was the infamous Devil Baby.
And there are several other stories about the Devil Baby of Hull House.
Jane Addams tried fruitlessly to convince people that there was no Devil Baby. Some folks simply thought that ignorant immigrants misunderstood a common birth deformity as a mark of the Devil. And to this day, no one knows exactly if there ever was a Devil Baby at Hull House.
So what occured here? Mass Hysteria? A misunderstanding of a deformity? A legend started by older women of these immigrant groups to teach the younger women, becoming too Americanized, a lesson in morality?
Krafted with luv
by monsters
#2
Posted 06 November 2005 - 02:55 AM
Take my hand and we'll go riding through the sunshine from above
#3
Posted 06 November 2005 - 07:31 AM
From what you've said it sounds like a lot of middle class conservative types in particular would have found something wrong with the complex. Not only was it founded by women, but it also gave meeting room to trades unions and working womes groups.
It's easy to imagine someone saying that Hull house is the home of the devil- or that the devil's children live there. Add to that gossip and the tendancy of people to exagerate and villify as much as possible and it's easy to see how a rumour that a devil child was living there.
The whole thing sounds rather fascinating actually- like a really good window into life during that time. Got any links?
The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.
Sonnet XCIVBut if that flower with base infection meet,The basest weed outbraves his dignity:For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
#4
Posted 06 November 2005 - 07:49 AM
Here's Hull Houses official web site. of course there is nothing about the Devil Baby
http://www.hullhouse.org/
here's one from the travel channel
http://travel.discov.../hullhouse.html
Edited by DukeofBoogie, 06 November 2005 - 07:50 AM.
I've been hit by

#5
Posted 06 November 2005 - 10:34 AM
The legend was not from the middle class or upper class, but from the actual immigrants in the neighbourhood. It started with them, flourish with them. The rest of the city learned it from them. I really don't envision educated middle and upper middle class people coming up with something like this at that time.
From Ghosts of the Prairie
http://www.prairieghosts.com/hull.html
Hull House Museum (nothing about the Devil Baby, but a history of the area the house operated in)
http://wall.aa.uic.e...t/HullHouse.asp
You can also just type in Hull House and/or Hull House Devil Baby in any search engine to get hundreds and hundreds of links. Like I said, not exactly an obscure local legend.
Krafted with luv
by monsters
#6
Posted 06 November 2005 - 10:37 AM
Would we ever know? But whatever happened to this kid?
No one even knows if there actually was a child, devil spawn or deformed. Which is part of the mystery of this legend.
Krafted with luv
by monsters
#7
Posted 20 November 2005 - 05:23 AM
Or it could be possible that I play entirely too much Resident Evil.
#8
Posted 20 November 2005 - 10:21 AM
http://www.ghostvill...4&hl=melonheads
Krafted with luv
by monsters
#9
Posted 16 March 2006 - 12:36 PM
Check out my artwork at:http://www.jimdemick.com/
and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Jim-Demick/261669903877527
"There are some things money can't buy...A good imagination is one of them
#11
Posted 15 October 2007 - 02:30 PM
During a Ghost Tour at hull house my fiance snapped a picture. It was viewd by many people there, and a few other photo experts, it may have the image of the Devil baby in one of the panes of glass
E-mail me for the image since i have no idea how to insert it here.
#13
Posted 30 October 2007 - 09:15 PM
I'm also fond of the Jersey Devil legend.
LOL.... The Jersey Devil is what this story reminded me of too. Both, are really great stories, thanks for sharing.
'Creative Dreaming'Author: Electra Rainhttp://www.helium.co...t-motion-follow
#14
Posted 31 October 2007 - 10:33 AM
**Happy Halloween!!**
#15
Posted 02 November 2007 - 12:21 PM
So what occured here? Mass Hysteria? A misunderstanding of a deformity? A legend started by older women of these immigrant groups to teach the younger women, becoming too Americanized, a lesson in morality?
I'd say quite possibly a mixture of all three of those things. It doesn't take much for a story to get out of hand. It wouldn't even have to be a major deformity. For instance, I once had a friend whose son was born with pointed tufts of hair on top of his ears, and they jokingly talked about having had a werewolf-baby. Amongst a lot of poor, uneducated folk, not all of them speaking the same language and some possibly half-remembering some sort of old folktales with a moral point (and I'm pretty sure there are stories only a little different going back to the Middle Ages, it's just the specific persistent attachment of it to Hull House that makes me think there may have been some incident in particular)....it's not at all hard to see how that kind of thing could get taken out of context and exaggerated.
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