Sylvia - VIII: Done Because We Are Too Many

The economics of poverty in a first world country like the United States can be tricky.  In 1965, the year Sylvia Likens died, poverty was at the top of the domestic policy agenda.  President Lyndon Johnson had declared a War on Poverty, but its benefits never made their way to the Baniszewski household.

And yet references to artifacts of the postwar consumer culture abound in the testimony given by the witnesses at the 1966 trial.  Coke, Pepsi, White Castle hamburgers, Trend detergent, Pampers, Shell filling stations.  You can see its detritus as well in the crime scene photos.  Dove soap, Double Cola, Miracle Whip, Nabisco saltines. 

In Kate Millett’s The Basement the thoughts of the semi-fictionalized characters often turn to the just out of reach bounty of American consumerism.  In one passage Sylvia muses idly on the qualities of various brands of soda and how happy drinking a cold bottle of Coke made her feel on a warm summer’s day at the fair.  In another Gertrude fusses to herself how she, a grown woman, didn’t even have the price of a Coca-Cola on her person.  When Gertie spots the phantom smear of mustard at the corner of Sylvia’s mouth, she thinks resentfully how nice it would be to have dinner out with someone else doing the cooking for her. 

Food was certainly a preoccupation in the Baniszewski house.  Gertrude claimed that while food would be scarce a day or two before the next support check arrived there was usually enough to eat.  Jenny’s testimony indicated otherwise.  Aside from occasionally robust suppers of hot dogs or lunches with cold cut sandwiches the family diet consisted mainly of toast and canned soup.  There were nine children in the home, most of them still growing and one who was pregnant.  As the baby little Denny had first claim to any milk in the house.  Stephanie (and Sylvia for a few weeks until she was forced to drop out) earned a hot lunch each school day working in the cafeteria which eased the hunger pangs a bit.  The rest subsisted on a few hundred calories a day.  Had the situation continued, the wellbeing of each of the kids would have been negatively affected perhaps with lifelong health implications.

The Baniszewski home reflected the paradoxes of poverty in a consumer culture.  The family didn’t have a stove to cook on, and their main eating utensil at the end was a single shared spoon.  The kids shared beds.  They lived on a sparse diet.  But they had a TV and a hi-fi.  They had a puppy which was later joined by a police dog.  Baby Denny was clad in expensive disposable diapers.  And Gertrude was a heavy smoker. 

Concerning that last item, it’s an odd thing how decades after mainstream culture rejected smoking that it remains so prevalent among the poor.  It reminds me of my time with social services when clients would come in to sign up for assistance, telling their caseworker how they couldn’t afford food or diapers for the baby.  As soon as they were out the front door they’d light up.  At which point we would all look at each other knowingly and then one of us would say, “But they always have money for cigarettes.”

I suppose it’s the grinding monotony of life for the very poor that makes them seek anything that makes them feel good for a moment or two.  George Orwell wrote as much eight decades ago in The Road to Wigan Pier.  I know it from my own experience.  I remember how good a candy bar or a Coke would make me feel when I was a kid, especially when things were particularly lousy, even though more wholesome foods would have been better for me.  But the economics of poverty aren’t rational for the people experiencing it.  I would unfailingly choose my children’s welfare over an unnecessary luxury for myself but I now have the good fortune of being a bystander to poverty rather than being immersed in it as I was when young.

Sylvia herself had few possessions beyond the clothes in her closet.  According to Jenny, Sylvia owned a pocketbook, a bible, and a jewelry box containing a couple of pins.  Sylvia’s housemates coveted even these meager belongings.  Her wardrobe was diminished significantly over the weeks as Gertrude or the kids would literally rip the clothes from her back.  When Sylvia would be called away while reading her bible she would hide it fearing it would be stolen.  However, she was generous just the same.  During her first days in the Baniszewski home Sylvia would share items of clothing with Stephanie and even with Gertrude.  Being poor herself Sylvia would have understood the Baniszewskis’ lifestyle and would have wanted to lend a hand where and when she could.

Gertrude did have things in common with the Likens in terms of economic circumstances.  All engaged in short-term, transient labor.  Like Lester and Betty, Gertrude sometimes worked as a concessionaire at special events, in Gertrude’s case vending refreshments at the Speedway during the Indianapolis 500.  Like Sylvia, Gertrude babysat and did piecework ironing laundry to earn money.  Both the Likens and Baniszewskis moved around frequently, the adequacy of their accommodations fluctuating with the state of their finances.  Though living close to the margins economically prudent management of scarce resources in such a situation can mitigate its effects.  Regrettably for those who depended on her, prudent management was a bit beyond Gertie’s capabilities.

Gertrude Baniszewski was poorly educated, yes, but more significantly she was emotionally immature.  She seemed more comfortable in the company of younger people and was not very competent in the adult world.  She wasn’t equipped to make responsible decisions for herself let alone for her family.  Perhaps more importantly she lacked a strong social support network to help her manage and to check her darker impulses, particularly in the face of want.  (Or chill penury, if you will.)

Gertrude and Paula may have been among the very few people ever who actually benefitted from going to prison.  Paula told her attorney George Rice the bed in her cell was the most comfortable she had ever slept on.  Gertrude both at her 1971 retrial and at her 1985 parole hearing looked far healthier and better fed than she did when arrested in 1965.   There may have been more than material benefits for the Baniszewskis among the consequences of having murdered Sylvia.  Kate Millett observed that the media attention given the 1966 trial provided Gertie and her brood with a form of validation, that the world, having ignored them for so long, finally noticed they existed. 

Strange, isn’t it, that it took a particularly heinous act for the world to notice the Baniszewskis?  Sylvia and Jenny Likens had been left among people whose conduct resembled that of a pack of feral dogs.  Poverty, not only financial poverty but spiritual, undoubtedly contributed to the behavior of those inhabiting the Baniszewski house.  Paula’s attorney George Rice certainly painted it that way.  Perhaps he even had a valid point. 

However, we should also mark well the words of Leroy New in his closing statement at the trial.  Untold, nameless numbers of poor people throughout history have never descended to the depravity of Gertrude Baniszewski and her children.  Poverty is structural but there are means of coping with it.  More importantly, bad behavior is never mandatory.  There is always a choice.  If only the people within the four walls of 3850 East New York Street had possessed the moral sense to understand this.

© 2015 The Unassuming Scholar