A Corn-Husker Victim in Later Life

Lately at the Hobart Historical Museum I've been paging through a large collection of arrest reports from the Hobart police department that begin in 1938 and run through the mid-1940s. Thus far it's mostly been petty crime — trespassing on railroad property, speeding, double-parking, U-turns on Main Street, petty larceny, runaway boys. Now and then an assault and battery. A couple suspicion-of-involuntary-manslaughters in the wake of a fatal car accident, but so far those cases were cleared by the coroner. The most common crime seems to be public intoxication, and that's also where we see the most repeat offenders. One name that keep coming up is William Witt. He's in his fifties, gives his occupation as laborer, sometimes teamster, and his most distinguishing characteristic is that his right arm has been amputated.

He sounds to me like the same William Witt who lost his arm to a corn husker in 1901, at the age of nineteen.

That's sad. Not to say that alcoholics always have a reason for being alcoholics, but if I'd had my right arm violently injured and cut off, I might take to drink too. Especially considering the degree to which a person who suffered such an injury, in those days, was simply left to deal with it on his own. Prosthetics, particularly for arms and hands, were crude. Physical therapy, psychological counseling — did they even exist?