Forgotten News

by Jack Finney

  So Uhl and Emma Cunningham began working out details. "Dr. Uhl asked her when it would be most convenient for her to become a mother. Thursday, July 28, was the shortest possible time for the 'ordinary gestation' (as spoken of by Judge Dean), under the theory of the marriage before the Surrogate, and so the first week in August became the settled upon time." Uhl told her he'd see what he could do about lining up a baby, and returned to Oakey Hall to ask what next.

  Hall talked to a member of the Committee of Bellevue, who spoke to the warden of Bellevue, Timothy Daly, who said no problem: he'd produce a new baby from the lying-in ward whenever they needed one; and Hall passed the good word on to Uhl. But Uhl was worried. Mrs. Cunningham, he warned Hall, "was a very shrewd plotting woman, … and he was afraid the plan might not work…." If a new baby seemed too easily produced, she'd be suspicious, he thought, so A. Oakey Hall figured out a story.

  Uhl was to go back and tell Emma Cunningham that he'd found "a California widow" who'd be giving birth in the first couple of days of August, and who was ready and anxious to be rid of the new baby just as fast as possible afterward because she was sailing to California to rejoin her husband.

  It was a believable story, and clever of Hall: because "California widow" meant a woman whose husband was long gone to the far-off gold fields; and more than one such woman had found herself pregnant too many months after her husband had left her. It was well known that such babies were often wonderfully easy to adopt without fussy legalities or questions; and just as quickly and secretly as could be managed.

  The new baby was to be born in Elm Street, Oakey Hall also decided, because Elm (since renamed Elk Street) was a street full of apartments for rent, and not far from Bond. Uhl passed on that news to Mrs. Cunningham along with the "California widow" story.

  Dr. Uhl's lawyers had advised him to have nothing to do with Dr. Catlin. "But one day as I was going up Broadway," said Dr. Uhl—over and again we see that Broadway was the true center of town: the theaters, big hotels, the fashionable restaurants and saloons, prosperous offices, all the action, seemed to be here—he ran into Dr. Catlin.

  There was no avoiding it: Catlin "stopped me in the street," said Uhl —this is Catlin—"and insisted upon conversing with me on the subject.

  I told him I supposed we understood each other; there was no necessity for any conferences…. He said no; we must arrange things together. I did not say much. During the conversation he said he had devised this plan while he was in the Tombs [visiting Emma Cunningham]. It was a mere matter of justice to her, for she had been a very much abused woman, but that they had made up their minds that they must have another Doctor, they could not get on without one, and certain parties had been applied to to get me to enter the plot. I told him I was in a hurry, and if he wished to see me he must call at my office. I then got into a stage, and went up town. He never called."

  Up in his patient's bedroom again, Uhl told Mrs. Cunningham that the California widow's baby was due Monday or Tuesday, August 3 or 4, and now things began to move. It had occurred to Oakey Hall that whoever was to be hustling a new baby around the city probably ought to be a doctor, so he got in touch with his brother-in-law, personal physician, and "classmate," Dr. John De La Montagnie, who lived at Fishkill Landing in Dutchess County. De La Montagnie said he'd be glad to come to New York and lend a hand in this, as who wouldn't.

  He arrived Monday morning, went to the D.A.'s Broadway office, and was introduced to Dr. Uhl. Then the two men went over to Elm Street to find an apartment, but had trouble. It had to be here on Elm because that's what they'd told Mrs. Cunningham; and it had to be secluded enough so that whoever came for the baby wouldn't be too worried about being seen. Not till afternoon did they find, at 190 Elm, a parlor and bedroom both available and secluded enough; and it still had its problems. For one thing, it was unfurnished, and the owner, a German immigrant named William Vieser, lived in the building and ran a little business here besides: a "lager-bier cellar" where he also sold wine.

  They took it anyway—it was late—paying a month's rent in advance, and while Dr. De La Montagnie went up to Bellevue, the D.A. himself sent over a load of his own household furnishings: a sofa-bedstead, round table, rocking chair, roll of carpeting, live plain chairs, looking glass, candle, matches, nursing bottle, a trunkful of bedding and pillows; he thought of everything.

  In the Bellevue lying-in ward lay two new babies, and when Dr. De La Montagnie arrived, Warden "Daly told me that I might make my own selection," but Daly was wrong. De La Montagnie picked one of the infants, but its mother refused to let him borrow it; just didn't feel like loaning out her brand-new baby, even for a worthy cause. So he turned to the only other choice, "a pretty, blue-eyed little girl," he said, "which was born on Saturday, and the mother consented…."

  I wonder, though, how much choice she was really given. She was Elizabeth Ann Anderson, drawn here from life, at Bellevue, and "but 27 years of age, though from her appearance she might easily be mistaken for a woman of 40. Something is to be allowed for the prostration incident to childbirth, but her features plainly exhibit traces of care and suffering. Her hair has turned prematurely gray, her cheeks are sunken, and her eyes hollow…." Her husband, "by occupation a physiognomist," and who "she reluctantly confesses to be very intemperate, deserted her, and she then supported herself… by plain sewing. She made up aprons and sacks, sun-bonnets, &c., and then sold them personally at Washington Market. On Saturday last, being conscious of the symptoms of confinement, she … procured a permit to enter [Bellevue]—as many indigent women do in such cases—and rode up in a Third-avenue car to Twenty-Seventh-street, from which point she undertook to walk to the Hospital, situated at the foot of that street. When near the corner of Twenty-Sixth-street and Second-avenue, she began to be seized with labor pains, and seeing a yard gate open, staggered in and sat down on the steps. An Irish domestic found her in that condition, but declined to take her in the house, as her mistress, she said, was not at home. The most she did was to send to the Hospital, not far distant, for medical assistance. A physician soon came and found Mrs. Anderson in a rear house in the yard, having just given birth to a female child. From thence she was immediately conveyed to the Hospital…." And now: a charity patient at Bellevue; in 1857; with no money, husband, or shred of power; the warden of the hospital standing at her bedside explaining why she ought to cooperate; Elizabeth Anderson said yes, they could take her baby.

  "About noon on Monday, Captains Speight, Dilk and myself," said Captain Hopkins of the Twenty-third Precinct, "were standing in Broadway, conversing. Mr. Hall [the D.A.] came along at the moment…." Captain Hopkins's description of what Hall then said to the three of them is in the grand police tradition of unlikely speech: "… addressing us, [Hall] said, 'Gentlemen, I am glad to meet you. I want you on very important business, very important business indeed. You are aware that … Captains or Inspectors of Police [now have the] power to enter at any hour any dwelling in which they have reason to believe a felony is being or about to be committed. I shall want some of you gentlemen to act in accordance with the section of the law to which I allude, this evening…. Meet me at 7½ o'clock this evening, at the Fifteenth Police Precinct Station-house, without fail. Say not a word about what I have spoken to you, to anyone. Seven and a half, remember!—good bye."

  In the early afternoon Dr. Uhl arrived at 31 Bond, went up to the bedroom, and told Emma Cunningham that it looked as though the baby would be born tonight. She thought about that, then told Uhl that if the baby was born in the early part of the evening, a lady would come for it, and bring it back here to number 31 tonight. But if the baby was born late in the evening, the lady would wait all night at 190 Elm, and then bring the baby back to 31 Bond in the very early morning. But of course it was impossible to allow anyone from here to wait around 190 Elm all night; and then Mrs. Cunningham had still another frightening idea: she said she thought she'd send a lady around to 190 Elm this very afternoon just to look the place o
ver in advance.

  Uhl got out, hurried over to Elm, and told the D.A.—who was there, fortunately—that not only did the baby have to be born early this evening, but someone would be along any minute to inspect the place. It was panicky news: what if the lady decided to actually come inside? The furniture wasn't even in place, and what about a mother? Well, they didn't have a mother yet, and no time to get one. So, shoving the furniture into place as fast as they could heave it around, they also sent someone for "a friend of Dr. Uhl's," said Oakey Hall, "Dr. William N. Gilchrest, a druggist, at No. 62½ Spring Street, near by … ." He came right over, and they told him what he had to do: "put on a nightcap and lie in bed and moan as if in all the agonies of afterbirth."

  The druggist got into bed, and pulled on the nightcap. "I had an old fishing basket, one of my own," Oakey Hall continued, "with a small pillow in it, ready to put the child in to be given to the messenger." They were ready now with everything but the baby, Uhl sitting on the sill of the front window watching the street, ready to signal for moans from Gilchrest, the druggist.

  At 31 Bond the action had also begun. Georgiana was home from Beecher's Saratoga boarding school, and I suppose she believed her mother was pregnant, as I think Helen and Augusta did. Because now Mrs. Cunningham put on what seems to have been a sham for their benefit. Helen said, "… My mother had not been well for the past week. She was taken with a violent pain on Monday [afternoon]. I ran upstairs and got some brandy and peppermint, and she took it… felt much better, and went upstairs…." I make the guess that this may have been the excuse and the time for Mrs. Cunningham to sneak out of her bedroom and the house to go inspect 190 Elm.

  For no more than fifteen minutes, Dr. Uhl thought, he sat on the front window sill at 190, the furniture in place, Gilchrest waiting in bed in his nightcap. Then "I saw Mrs. Cunningham pass the house," Uhl said, "and look at it closely." He watched her, ready to call for moans, but: "She stopped and looked" at the house, he said, then turned away.

  Minutes later—and fortunately not meeting Mrs. Cunningham there on the sidewalk—Dr. De La Montagnie arrived with the baby. He handed it over to Uhl, and then it suddenly occurred to him that they needed more than just a baby for a convincing birth; they had to have a placenta, too. "For this purpose," said De La Montagnie, "I took a carriage, and drove straightaway to Bellevue Hospital again, leaving Dr. Uhl … to take care of the baby."

  Back home at 31 Bond, Mrs. Cunningham got into bed again, and resumed crying out with simulated labor pains. After a while Augusta had all she could take of that, and simply walked out of the house, and over to an aunt's, a Mrs. Simonson who lived on Lexington between Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth, and there Augusta stayed. Mrs. Cunningham sent word to her friend Catherine Wilt to hurry over; her labor was beginning.

  Mrs. Wilt arrived, and stayed for twenty minutes of watching her friend tossing and crying out. She was sent back home around seven with a message for her husband, George. He hadn't worked for four years, was available for errands, and was to hurry over to Brooklyn in the ferry now, and fetch Dr. Catlin.

  At seven-thirty, as requested, Captains Dilk, Speight, and Hopkins met A. Oakey Hall at his office in Broadway, where, said Hopkins in splendid police-ese, "he imparted the nature of the business which he desired us to aid him in."

  "At the Hospital at 8 o'clock," said Dr. De La Montagnie, "I got possession of the afterbirth of another child, rolled up in a piece of silk oil-cloth, and also obtained the services of an intelligent Irish girl named Mary Regan to personate the nurse of the California widow and the baby…. With my load I drove as fast as possible to Elm Street, fearing the woman might get there before me." (Another fine moment for time travel: to stand watching that carriage speed through the Manhattan dusk bearing its silk-wrapped placenta.) "We stopped the carriage at the corner of Broome and Elm Streets," De La Montagnie continued, and he and the nurse walked to 190 Elm.

  "Just after dusk," said Captain Hopkins, at about eight-thirty, the three police captains and a few ordinary cops took the stations to which Oakey Hall sent them. Hall put cops everywhere: one at each end of Bond Street, one in the shadows directly across from 31, one in the alley behind the house, of which we have this picture.

  And still another across the street from 190 Elm. At about the same time the cops were taking their positions, Dr. De La Montagnie was busy doing something I feel must have been the D.A.'s idea: because who else would be thinking just now in terms of courtroom evidence? Oakey Hall seems already to be hearing a defense attorney demanding: How can you prove it was the same baby you got from Bellevue? Well, a New York D.A. would have prosecuted more than one crook caught with paper money secretly marked beforehand. And now, up in a bedroom of 190 Elm Street, Dr. De La Montagnie pulled down the hospital gown of Elizabeth Anderson's about-to-be-born-again baby, and dabbed it "with lunar caustic behind its left ear and under each arm."

  "Lunar caustic" is silver nitrate, which left no visible marks now, but in a day or so the marks would turn black, identifying Baby Anderson like a marked bill. And just to make absolutely sure of a positive identification later, Dr. De La Montagnie pulled out his pocket handkerchief, tore off a thin strip along its colored border, and tied this onto the stump of the baby's umbilical cord. Nurse Mary Regan then tucked baby back into the D.A.'s fishing basket,

  and Dr. De La Montagnie —having a wonderful time, I suspect—went out and across the street, where he joined Patrolman Walsh in watching the house.

  Somewhere around the time all this was happening, "between eight and nine o'clock," said Dr. Uhl, "I called on Mrs. Cunningham again, and was shown upstairs to the second story. The room was very dark indeed. There was no light. I walked into the front room where Mrs. Burdell was pretending to have labor pains. She said she would call the lady who was to go, and whose name she would not tell. She called her to her bedside, and I recognized the person who calls herself Mrs. Burdell's sister…. Mrs. Burdell asked her if she was ready to go. She said yes, and asked where the black dress was, and then it was arranged between us that the lady would follow me [he means she would come along a little later] to No. 190 Elm-street, that I should wait in the front door for her, and that the lady should hold in her hand a white handkerchief, that I should recognize her."

  "After Dr. Uhl had left," Dr. Catlin arrived at No. 31, said Helen Cunningham, and she let him in. "He went into mother's room, and I went into the back room. I asked the Doctor if mother was dangerous, and he said it was nothing but a cramp or colic. He did not say anything more in reference to her condition. After that, Mrs. Barnes called him in the room, and I went in after him. Mother appeared to be in great pain, when I went up to her and asked her if I could do anything for her. She said, 'No, daughter.' I then asked Dr. Catlin if he would stay all night. He said, 'I'll see whether I will or not.' I then left the room, and went down to the kitchen. I called my sister Georgiana … to go with me. I got some cheese, preserves, and bread and butter, with some ice and ice water. I put them on a tray, and took them upstairs to the back room, and placed them on a table…. I saw Mrs. Barnes' son come in with a bundle, and take it to the third story."

  George Wilt came to the house after having gone to Brooklyn for Dr. Catlin, arriving after Catlin because he'd "stopped in the Third Avenue awhile." I don't know where; a saloon, maybe. But George Wilt was a butcher, and someone that night obtained a bucket of animal blood and brought it to 31 Bond. Though it could have been "Mrs. Barnes' son come in with a bundle …."

  Dr. Catlin sent George Wilt up to Dr. Uhl's on Twentieth Street to fetch him here. Across the street, concealed in the darkness, Captain Speight watched Wilt leave. "I went to Dr. Uhl's," said Wilt, "and left a message on the slate, the Doctor not being at home."

  Wilt came back to 31 Bond, lay down on the front-parlor sofa, "heard groans which appeared to come from the room of Mrs. Cunningham," and fell asleep. He didn't wake up, he said, till eleven o'clock.

  Helen had done all she could think of for
her mother, and now she asked Georgiana "to come see mother, but she refused, as she was unwell, and did not wish to see mother suffer so. I then told mother I was going to bed, and that she was to call me if she grew worse…. Dr. Catlin was standing at the bedside … ." And now, with Helen and Georgiana upstairs getting ready for bed, the boys staying elsewhere, Augusta out of the house, and George Wilt asleep downstairs, Emma Cunningham was alone with Dr. Catlin and her sister.

  Quickly she got dressed in dark concealing garments, including a coal-scuttle bonnet with veil, concealing her face; and then this steel-nerved, ever-bungling woman sneaked out of number 31, and began a stealthy walk, nearly every step of which was as well documented as Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  From across the street Captain Speight "saw a woman closely veiled, and having a black skirt and a gray mixed duster, come from the premises No. 31 Bond-street, and proceed up Bond…." He followed her "to the corner of the Bowery," where they both stood waiting "a few minutes for a car…."

  One came along, and even before it stopped rolling, the conductor's attention was drawn to the waiting woman because "she was much muffled-up, and seemed disguised…." The car stopped, the muffled-up lady got on at the back platform, and Captain Speight at the front, where he stayed. Said Conductor James Carrol, "From the fact of the locality and the disguise, I received the impression that it was Mrs. Cunningham."

  Conductor Carrol walked on through the car to the front platform, where he recognized Captain Speight. "I took him by the arm, and said, 'Is not that Mrs. Cunningham?'

  "He caught me by the arm, and said, 'Say not a word.'

  "I returned through the car, and took the lady's fare. I tried to see her face, but from the manner in which her head was enveloped I could not get a view of her features. We had passed along a few blocks, when Captain Speight came through to the back platform and asked me the time of night. I looked at my watch, and said, 'It is just five minutes past nine o'clock.'