Charles Ormsby
From Kook Science
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 — Edith Viola, John James, William Hearst, and Theodore Roosevelt — 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.
Press Coverage
- "Mrs. Joseph H. Ormsby is 30 and One of Triplets. Has Had 14 Children, Including Twins Twices and Triplets Once. Husband, a Poor Plumber, is Wrapped Up in Perpetual Motion Schemes.", Boston Globe (Boston, Mass.): 14, 1 October 1901, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/430813868
- "Fatherless Quadruplets", Daily Review (Decatur, Ill.): 2, 1 Oct. 1901, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/7394197, "He has been missing since last June. His wife says he deserted her one day after smashing all the furniture in the house while in a fit of joy over the partial success of the perpetual-motion machine upon which he had labored unceasingly for three years. The home-life of the Ormsbys was happy till three years ago, when the fascinating problem of perpetual motion took hold of the husband. Finally Ormsby finished his machine. It ran for sixty-two hours and then it stopped. The strain attendant upon the partial success of the machine, Mrs. Ormsby says, unbalanced the mind of her husband. He went away and she has not seen him since."
- "WEALTH FROM BABIES. Quadruplets Have Made a Fortune for Poor Family.", Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock, Ark.): 13, 29 June 1902, https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/138378402