Charles Ormsby

Charles Thomas Ormsby (November 7, 1873 - April 9, 1957), sometimes mistakenly called Joseph H. Ormsby, was an English-born plumber who, while a resident of Chicago, Illinois in 1901, abandoned his wife, Josephine True Ormsby, their newborn quadruplets, and their previous children, after, according to his wife, losing his faculties in a quest to discover perpetual motion. The quadruplets &mdash; Edith Viola, John James, William Hearst, and Theodore Roosevelt &mdash; received widespread public and media attention, becoming something of a cause célèbre, with exhibitions of the foursome drawing crowds reportedly in the thousands, enabling Josphine Ormsby to earn sums into the tens of thousands for photographs and appearances of her children.