Babe at St. Mary’s
Industrial School
No longer being watched by several
adult family members nor accompanied by other children of the extended Ruth
clan, Babe began running the streets of his new neighborhood. Less than eighteen months after moving to
Camden Street, Babe Ruth was sent to Saint Mary’s Industrial School on June 13,
1902.
Saint
Mary’s Industrial School was located in southwest Baltimore at Wilkens and
Caton avenues, not that far from Babe’s first home at 622 Frederick Avenue
extended. Its main building was an
imposing five-story, stone structure with central tower and mansard roof. Behind locked gates, the school was self-contained
including a chapel, hospital, dining room, dormitories, class rooms, vocational
shops, hot houses, a barn housing livestock and fields for farm crops. After the school closed in 1950, Cardinal
Gibbons High School took over its campus and occupied the grounds for sixty
years. Cardinal Gibbons closed in 2010,
and the campus awaits redevelopment by St. Agnes Hospital just to the
southwest. In 2013, only a laundry
building and ball field survives from Babe Ruth’s era.
Saint Mary’s Industrial School took
in unwanted children. A Catholic
institution run by the Xaverian Brothers, it was a live-in reformatory,
orphanage and boarding school. Some boys
were sent to Saint Mary’s by the courts.
Other children found there way to Saint Mary’s when parents died and
there was no one to take them in. Some
parents paid the school to board their children, when they were unable to care
for them.
During 1902, there were 814
children at Saint Mary’s Industrial School including Babe Ruth and 302 other
boys admitted that year, while 331 were discharged. The average number of children in the school
month by month was 498. Most were city
children: 583 came from Baltimore City
with 140 from other counties in Maryland.
One hundred eleven were placed in the school as boarders by parents and
guardians.1
Although many have speculated why
Babe Ruth wound up at St. Mary’s, there is no conclusive evidence of the
specific reason. Newspaper articles often
reported when juveniles were sent to Saint Mary’s for committing criminal acts
or when parents were no longer able to control their offspring. No such report could be found regarding
George Herman Ruth, Jr.
His sister, Mamie, claimed that
Babe was sent to St. Mary’s because he refused to go to school. But she was only two years old in 1902. It would be strange to send a child away for
truancy in mid-June when public schools would close for summer vacation within
two weeks.
Babe’s official autobiography, The
Babe Ruth Story as told to Bob Considine, implies that Babe was just a bad
kid that didn’t know right from wrong.2 He would steal, drink and
generally terrorize the neighborhood until he was sent away. But in the few pages of the book that deal
with Babe’s early life, there are many errors.
The book spells his mother’s maiden name incorrectly, states she died
when Babe was 13 (she died when he was 17), and states she was mainly Irish
(instead of 100% German). The book
incorrectly states that Babe spent most of the first seven years of his life
living above his father’s saloon on Camden Street studying the rough talk of
longshoreman, merchant sailors and waterfront bums. In reality, Babe first lived at Camden Street
after his sixth birthday and Camden Street was not a waterfront neighborhood,
but a railroad transshipment point, more likely to be frequented by workers of
nearby cold storage warehouses than crews of merchant ships. The book also identifies an older brother
John who died “before he could be any help” to Babe, but there is no evidence
that Babe Ruth had an older brother.
Babe
was only seven years old when he was sent to Saint Mary’s and was later labeled
as “incorrigible.” How inept were George
and Katie as parents that they could not control a seven year old child – even
if he was large for his age? Were they
really so busy they couldn’t watch over him?
If they were so poor, how could they own a bar?
Whatever the reasons, records
indicate that Babe Ruth was first admitted to St. Mary’s Industrial School in
1902. It is unclear how long he remained
at St. Mary’s. The Babe Ruth Story
provides the following time line:
“I was released from St. Mary’s in
July, 1902, but my parents returned me there in November of the same year. My people moved to a new neighborhood just
before Christmas, 1902, and I was released to them again. This time I stayed “out” until 1904, but then
they put me back again and I was not released until 1908. Shortly after my mother died I was returned
to St. Mary’s once more by my father. He
took me back home in 1911 and returned me in 1912. I stayed in school – learning to be a tailor
and shirt maker - until February 27, 1914.” 3
There are several problems with
this time line. Katie Ruth died in 1912,
not 1910 as stated previously in the book.
A newspaper article about a minstrel show that took place at St. Mary’s on
November 26, 1908 identifies “G. Ruth” among the participants while the
timeline has Ruth released from St. Mary’s in 1908.4 The time line
does not include anything about Babe Ruth living at St. James Home for Boys for
a few months around 1913.5 The Babe Ruth Story written
shortly before Babe died in 1948 is notoriously inaccurate about Ruth’s early
life in Baltimore and is probably the original source of misinformation
included in later biographies.
Although specific information is
not available, it is doubtful that Bare Ruth was confined to St. Mary’s Industrial
School for the entire time period between 1902 and 1914. Most sources indicate
that he lived there a majority of the time, most likely eight of twelve
years. However another boy, Fats
Leisman, who was confined at Saint Mary’s during the time Ruth spent there,
indicates that Babe pretty much stayed at St. Mary’s from the time he arrived
until he signed with the minor league Baltimore Orioles in 1914.
While
Mamie remembers visiting Babe often on trips she took with Katie on the Wilkens
Avenue trolley, Fats Leisman relates a story one visiting day, “Babe would kid
me and say, ‘Well, I guess I am too big and ugly for anyone to come to see me.’”
After Leisman confided in Babe that he
hadn’t seen his mother in two years because she was ill, Babe replied, “You’re
lucky, Fats. It’s been ten years since I
have seen my father.”6
Some of
Babe’s short stays away from Saint Mary’s was because he ran away. His cousin, Milton Brundige tells a story
that Babe was hiding out at his house after running away. When truant officers knocked on the door,
Babe jumped out of bed and ran out the back door right into the arms of a cop.7
There
is no way of confirming Babe’s attendance records at the school, since most of
the records were destroyed in an Administration Building fire in 1919. What is known is that Babe Ruth was baptized there
in 1908 and given his first communion, even though he had already been baptized
as a Catholic when he was a month old.8 He did well in learning a
trade to be a tailor, and developed good penmanship, a skill that came in handy
when years later he was to sign thousands of autographs. Most importantly, Babe took advantage of
every opportunity to play baseball. He
played hundreds of ball games every year and became the star player at the
school whether hitting, pitching or playing catcher left handed.
The
Brothers at St. Mary’s gave him the attention that he had not received at
home. While he was disciplined for bad
behavior, punishment was not malicious.
Babe always looked at St. Mary’s as his home and the Xaverian Brothers as
surrogate parents.
Babe’s real parents moved three times between 1902 and 1905. It cannot be said for certain whether Babe was living with them or confined at Saint Mary’s during this time. It is possible to trace his parents’ movements through newspaper articles, city directories and other sources to better understand what was happening to his family.
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1 Baltimore Sun, December 29, 1902, p. 6
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2 Babe Ruth Story as told to
Bob Considince, New York: E. P. Dutton
& Company, 1948, p. 11
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3 Babe Ruth Story as told to
Bob Considince, New York: E. P. Dutton
& Company, 1948, p. 13
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4 Baltimore Sun, November
27, 1908, p. 9
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5 Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert W.
Creamer, New York: Simon and Shuster,
1974, p. 39
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6 Babe: The Legend Comes to Life by Robert W.
Creamer, New York: Simon and Shuster,
1974, p. 32
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7 Schenectady Daily Gazette, February 7, 1995, page 12
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8 Babe Ruth - The Dark Side
by Paul F. Harris, p. 5
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