by Sara Donati
Eula Schmitt
NYC
29
June 8
Windsor Hotel
Jenny House
NYC
34
June 10
At home (Gramercy Park)
Esther Fromm
New Haven
24
June 12
Astor Hotel
Mariella Luna
Staten Island
29
June 13
Grand Union Hotel
Irina Svetlova
NYC (Russia)
28
June 16
St. Luke’s Hospital, in surgery
Mamie Winthrop
NYC
24
June 20
At home (Park Place)
*The Campbell murder and its investigation were complicated by the disappearance of Mrs. Campbell’s four young sons within a day of her death. As of the writing of this report police departments have had no success in tracking down or uncovering the fate of the Campbell children.
INVESTIGATING OFFICERS
D.S. Maroney and D.S. Mezzanotte (primary); Det. Larkin, Det. Sainsbury, and Det. Hazelton.
CAUSE OF DEATH
Systemic septic peritonitis and blood loss due to an illegal and willfully incompetent abortion performed by a knowledgeable person or persons with malice aforethought and harmful intent.
RELEVANT GEOGRAPHIC POINTS
There is reason to believe that the illegal operations were carried out in the vicinity of Jefferson Market. Contributing factors:
1. One of the victims was driven to the intersection of Sixth Ave. and Waverly Place because, as she told Miss Elizabeth Imhoff, her lady’s maid, she had an appointment nearby. She was picked up by her driver at the same spot two hours later, having undergone the operation.
2. The primary subject’s medical offices were on Tenth-str. directly across from the market.
3. There is circumstantial evidence linking Smithson’s Apothecary to the case, as discussed later in this report.
FACTS IN EVIDENCE
1. All victims were married and living with a spouse.
2. All were in good health and of child-bearing age, their race white.
3. All the victims were pregnant. In medical terms, all the victims were “multipara”—having given birth more than once.
4. All were solvent and financially sound, though the range of income is broad. Household annual incomes ranged from $3,200 (Campbell) to approximately $60,000 (Winthrop).
5. Two of the victims lived in French flats that demand high rents. The others all lived in houses owned by their husbands. In addition to their home on Park Place, the Winthrops have a residence on Long Island, another in Paris, and one in Newport, R.I.
6. Archer Campbell’s annual income, while comfortable, would not generally be enough to purchase and maintain a single-family residence. In fact, after his wife’s death and the disappearance of his sons, evidence linked Campbell to some $50,000 in stolen bearer bonds. He was extradited to Boston where he was tried and sentenced to fifteen years hard labor.
7. All the victims attended religious services regularly. Of the nine, two were Methodist, two Baptist, three Episcopalian, one Russian Orthodox, and one Jewish.
8. No record or evidence of insanity, violence or criminal activity, dissolution, promiscuity, addiction to drugs or alcohol, bankruptcy, or gambling debt in any case.
9. Nearest family members (husbands, parents, children, etc.) are likewise without criminal vulnerabilities with the exception of Archer Campbell, as discussed above.
10. Physicians of record for all victims were interviewed. None report anything out of the ordinary during the most recent office visits. All were questioned about the patients’ state of mind and mental health. None had any suspicions to report.
11. Each victim purposefully sought out an abortion from person or persons unknown.
12. The motivations for seeking out the procedure varied widely. Some were motivated by health concerns, some by concern about caring for a larger family, and one by travel plans.
13. The victims paid between $150 and $350 for the procedure.
14. In those cases where a victim was seen by a doctor after surgery but before death, that doctor was interviewed. In every case the physician reported the same clinical observations (see Dr. Lambert’s report).
15. The victims did not move in the same social circles, had no common family history, nor did they live near one another, attend the same church, or work with the same charities. Their children are not acquainted, nor are their husbands.
16. The earlier victims were found fully dressed, while the later ones were only partially dressed, specifically, they were without the corsets they were known to wear habitually.
We have been unable to ascertain how the guilty party and the victims became acquainted. There is some evidence that newspaper advertisements played a role. Investigating officers spent almost six months pursuing and interviewing seventy-eight individuals who placed such ads, but no viable suspects came to light. Examples of these advertisements are included in the Appendix. Note especially the mention of Smithson’s Apothecary.
NEW YORK CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT
MULTIPARA HOMICIDES INVESTIGATION
January 1, 1884
Prepared by
D.S. G. Mezzanotte
Two primary suspects were identified.
1. Dr. James McGrath Cameron
The primary suspect, now deceased, was Dr. James McGrath Cameron, originally of Scotland, who came to the city at age ten with his family. Cameron was a physician with offices near Jefferson Market. He had a reputation as an able doctor, but one who frightened and intimidated his patients on religious grounds. See interview summaries, appended.
Cameron attended the Janine Campbell inquest as an observer, and made his opinions known during the hearing from the gallery, through public statements, and by letters to newspaper editors. All of the victims deserved their deaths, in his opinion, on the basis of their sins and pride.
Dr. Cameron removed to Philadelphia to spend his last days with a sister, leaving the city on June 22 or 23. The Philadelphia Police Department, informed of our interest in Cameron, sent us an article on his death from the Philadelphia Eagle dated August 25, 1883. It is attached to this report.
After Dr. Cameron left the city there were no further multipara cases.
2. Dr. Neill Graham
Dr. Graham was born August 29, 1860, in this city. He is the son of Hubert Graham, a greengrocer, and Ruth Graham, both of this city, both deceased. Graham graduated from the medical department at Bellevue last year, and is now a resident on the staff at Woman’s Hospital. His specialty is surgery.
At the time of the deaths under investigation he was an intern at Bellevue and worked part time as an ambulance doctor. He was on duty at the Jefferson Square police court when a call for assistance at the Campbell home came in. Dr. Graham attended.
Mrs. Campbell asked to be taken to the New Amsterdam for treatment, to which he agreed. On arrival he requested and was granted permission to stay and observe the emergency surgery, during which she died.
Comments Graham made to Detective Sergeants Maroney and Mezzanotte during
investigation of the Campbell case first brought him into serious consideration as a suspect.
We have not been able to account for all of Dr. Graham’s time over the period in which the nine victims disappeared, and we still consider him a suspect.
Other Parties of Interest
1. Dr. Cameron’s granddaughter Mrs. Nora Smithson was his nurse and assistant for many years. When Cameron suspended his medical practice she married Geoffrey Smithson of Smithson’s Apothecary, where she took on responsibility for the shop and customers. We have no evidence linking Mrs. Smithson to the illegal operations but believe she may have some relevant knowledge (see discussion of newspaper advertisements below). Interviews have not persuaded her to cooperate with the investigation.
2. Dr. dePaul, an individual who placed newspaper advertisements soliciting patients seeking illegal operations. Smithson’s Apothecary was mentioned prominently in these advertisements (appended). We have been unable to find any Dr. dePaul in the city, and inquiries with the newspapers provided no further information on the person placing the ads.
SUMMARY
After consulting forensic and other medical specialists it is our opinion that the guilty party or parties sought out women who first, were able to pay a very high fee for services; second, were already mothers and capable of both bearing and raising another child; and finally and most important, sought medical assistance to end a pregnancy.
The victims’ motivations or reasons varied widely and seem to have been of little interest or importance. The purpose was, simply, to punish those women or, as one consulting physician suggested, to remind women that by refusing to bear more children they had abandoned their primary purpose in life, and had thus rendered themselves disposable.
Since the Winthrop case in June there have been no further victims who fit the M.O. Inquiries with police departments in every city of at least medium size in a five-hundred-mile radius failed to uncover any similar crimes, and notifications in national publications have not been productive.
Until now the newspapers have not caught scent of these crimes, and it is our intent to keep it that way.
No new evidence has come to light for any of the identified cases. The chief of police, after consulting with the district attorney and the mayor, has instructed us to close this investigation until and unless more evidence is discovered or new victims appear.
G. Mezzanotte
BELLEVUE HOSPITAL MORGUE
Dr. Nicholas Lambert
Head, Forensics
July 14, 1883
I, Nicholas Lambert, a fully accredited physician in good standing, do hereby swear and affirm that the following report is based on my expert opinion as a physician and forensic specialist, and is set forth to the best of my ability and experience.
Nicholas Lambert
INTRODUCTION
In May of this year I was approached by Detective Sergeant Maroney of police headquarters and asked to consult in the matter of the suspicious deaths of nine women, to wit: Mrs. Janine Campbell, Mrs. Abigail Liljeström, Mrs. Catherine Crown, Mrs. Eula Schmitt, Mrs. Jenny House, Mrs. Esther Fromm, Mrs. Mariella Luna, Mrs. Irina Svetlova, and Mrs. Mamie Winthrop.
Accordingly the remains were delivered to my laboratory at Bellevue for post-mortem examination. One victim had been buried in Buffalo. Her remains were exhumed and transported to my lab here at Bellevue. In four cases I was carrying out a second examination, the first having been performed by other physicians. None of my clinical findings are significantly different from the original reports.
I conducted a full and thorough study of each victim, including analysis of bodily fluids and tissues, in as far as the state of decomposition made such tests possible.
FINDINGS
All the victims were healthy, normally formed, well-nourished women of child-bearing age.
Some of them showed signs of regular physical labor as is seen in matrons who care for a household themselves, such as red and roughened hands, healed burns, and calluses. Mrs. Campbell was the most extreme case, while Mrs. Winthrop was on the other extreme, with soft hands without blemish and manicured nails, as is normally seen in ladies of means.
All showed distinct clinical signs of pregnancy at time of death. In one case the pregnancy was in its earliest stages (Campbell); in another (Winthrop) I estimate that the pregnancy was somewhere between twenty and twenty-five weeks. Traces of fetal tissue were found in all nine victims. An abortion was performed in all cases.
Every one of the victims also had distinct clinical signs of having borne a child or children previously. Thus the multipara classification.
In each victim a trio of deep puncture wounds was found between the uterine horns, penetrating into the intestines. Some wounds were more violent or ragged than others, but all were essentially placed in a way that indicates expert knowledge of human anatomy and adequate surgical skills. In Mrs. Liljeström’s case alone, subsequent and possibly unintentional damage to the right uterine artery caused death more quickly than in the other eight.
Special note should be given to the fact that in none of the nine cases did I find similar damage to the cervix. Someone unfamiliar with the structure of the reproductive organs would certainly cause abrasions or cuts to the cervix when attempting to introduce a surgical instrument into the uterus. The fact that I found no such injuries in these victims is another indication that the guilty party had significant gynecological and/or surgical experience.
In all cases the puncture wounds in the uterus resulted in lacerations to the ileum, mesentery, and visceral and parietal peritoneum, causing fecal matter to be released into the abdominal cavity. These wounds caused massive bacterial contamination and the immediate onset of puerperal endometritis.
As a result and as was to be expected, the following symptoms were reported for those victims who were seen by physicians before death: severe abdominal and lower back pain, guarding, enlarged and tender uterus, high fever, pallor, nausea, vomiting, tachycardia, and copious discharge of purulent matter. In three cases (House, Svetlova, Winthrop) pelvic abscesses presented as palpable masses adjacent to but distinct from the uterus.
Post-mortem examination revealed large amounts of serum, albumin, and fibrino-purulent deposits in the abdomen. Mrs. Liljeström showed just the onset of infection, for reasons explained above.
As a side note: The pain suffered by eight of the women in their last hours is almost unimaginable. In my opinion, the person responsible for these deaths was aware that this would be the case.
MEDICAL SCIENCE
The three most salient problems that face every surgeon are (1) uncontrollable hemorrhage; (2) pain, which limits the patient’s ability to tolerate clinical intervention and makes time of the essence; and (3) inflammation, suppuration, and infection following from bacterial contamination of open wounds.
While medical advances of the last fifty years have produced often reliable methods to address each of these areas, deaths still occur during surgery for these and any number of other reasons outside the surgeon’s control. The point to keep in mind while reading this report is a simple one: the responsible party put aside antiseptic methods and in fact proceeded in a way to ensure contamination and infection.
DISCUSSION
Leaving aside for the moment the question of what is permitted under the law, abortions performed in an operating theater with the appropriate surgical instruments and strict attention to antiseptic methods by an experienced physician or midwife generally are safe, so long as they are performed before twelve weeks gestation and the patient is otherwise in good health.
When the practitioner has no medical training or surgical experience, penetrating wounds of the abdomen through the birth canal, cervix, or uterus are not unusual. Such injuries are common when a woman attempts the procedure on herself, which is the case with per
haps fifty percent of emergent cases that come to Bellevue for treatment.
An accidental puncture that goes deep enough to penetrate and contaminate the peritoneal cavity and intestines and is not treated immediately is always fatal once septicemia has been established. In theory, this need not be the case.
In ideal circumstances the abdominal cavity would have to be opened in a surgical setting where the strictest hygienic measures are followed. All contaminated or infected tissue and blood and all foreign matter would be evacuated and the cavity repeatedly rinsed with sterile water. Wounds to all nearby organs would have to be treated in the same way: cleaned, repeatedly flushed, sutured. Multiple layers would then be closed with proper drainage. With such treatment there is a chance, albeit a small one, that the victim might regain her health. None of the victims I examined received such medical treatment or any treatment at all. This surgical intervention was attempted in one case, Mrs. Janine Campbell. It was unsuccessful because septicemia was too far advanced and multiple organ failure had already begun.
Wounds of this magnitude that are not accidental—that can be clearly classified as suicidal or homicidal—are extremely rare. Yet that is what I find here in all nine cases.
The evidence indicates that the surgeries were performed by someone with medical knowledge and experience, someone who knew exactly what to do to ensure a fatal outcome after a long and painful decline. In my professional opinion, the same surgeon or doctor or well-trained midwife carried out all nine procedures.
SUMMARY
An unknown party with medical knowledge and experience designed and executed a procedure not to induce abortion (or perhaps, not to bring about abortion in the first line), but to cause systemic sepsis and a slow, extremely painful death. In all these cases, even immediate expert medical surgical intervention would have likely failed to save the mother’s life.
