Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is presented in In Cold Blood through two brief but contrasting encounters: a children’s shelter where Perry Smith recalled being abused, and soup that Perry and Dick ate during their flight. The book offers no broader account of the organization’s structure or work; its significance here rests on these sharply different contexts of shelter and hardship.

The Children’s Shelter

After Perry’s mother placed him in a Catholic orphanage, he was expelled after a few months and sent to a children’s shelter operated by the Salvation Army. In Perry’s recollection, the shelter’s treatment continued the rejection he had experienced at the orphanage: he said its staff hated him for wetting the bed and for being half-Indian.

Perry singled out a nurse who used a racial slur against him and subjected him to an ice-water bath, holding him under until he was nearly drowned. The abuse ended when Perry caught pneumonia and was hospitalized for two months. His account describes a grave personal experience at one shelter; it does not establish that the nurse’s conduct represented the organization more generally.

Perry’s Removal and Recovery

Perry recalled that his father returned while he was seriously ill. After Perry recovered, his father took him away from the shelter. The sequence makes the hospitalization both the consequence of the nurse’s abuse and the circumstance that brought his father back into his life. In the account, the shelter is therefore linked to a lasting childhood trauma, but also to the moment after which Perry left its care.

Soup During the Flight

Years later, the Salvation Army appears in a different, modest setting. While Perry and Dick were traveling with almost no money, the previous night’s meal had been bowls of Salvation Army soup; the next day, their only food had been stolen chocolate bars and chewing gum. The reference places the organization’s soup among the limited means by which the two men got by, a striking contrast with Perry’s earlier experience at its shelter.