Lethal Remedies

by M. Louisa Locke

  Yet, in both of these deaths, one of the attending physicians had been here with her, offering both reassurance and, when needed, advice. She hadn’t had that back-up today. Surprisingly, at the peak of the crisis, Ella hadn’t even thought about the fact that she was the only physician on the premises. She hadn’t time to think about anything but what she and the nurses needed to be doing next.

  However, now that the immediate crisis was over, she found herself shaking. She went into the bathroom on the first floor and took the time to wash her face and re-pin her hair. She also used some lotion to smooth her hands since she had been carefully washing her hands all afternoon with carbolic soap to ensure that if the child had something infectious she wouldn’t be passing it on.

  As Ella entered the dining room, Mrs. McClellan looked up from where she was carving the roast that the cook had prepared for that night’s dinner and said, “Dr. Blair, I do hope you have come to join us this once.”

  “Yes, I confess I’ve been smelling that roast all afternoon and thought I would like to actually eat it when it was hot, not later on in the week.”

  Nurse Dewar got up and brought another chair to the table for her, as Ella said a few pleasant words to the two patients who were having dinner downstairs, women who were due to be discharged in the morning.

  Good food and quiet conversation did much to restore Ella. However, just as she was about to ask Mrs. McClellan if she was ready to start their evening rounds, one of the upstairs servants came to the door of the dining room and signalled that she would like to speak to her.

  Ella got up and went over to the young girl and said, “Is there a problem?”

  “It’s Jocko, ma’am; he’s asked to speak with you. Seems to feel it is real important.”

  After telling Mrs. McClellan where she was going and that she would meet her on the second floor in a few moments, Ella climbed the two flights of the back stairs and went right to Jocko’s small room. She was surprised to see that one of his friends, Sean, was there, since the cheerful newsboy had been by on Monday, and it was her impression the boys tended to rotate their visits, so that none of them lost too much income.

  Ella greeted Sean and said, “Jocko, you wished to see me?”

  “Yes, doctor. Sean here read something in the morning edition of the Chronicle, thought I might be interested. It’s one of those little pieces the editors put in, gossip mostly. But sometimes these things hint at bigger stories that a reporter is working on.”

  Jocko pointed to a short column called Jottings About Town on the third page of the Chronicle and handed the page to her. The first item appeared to be a veiled mention of the new City Hall building, which had become a perennial scandal, since it was taking years longer and thousands of dollars more to complete. The second item was speculation on who was going to win a footrace planned for next week.

  Then she read the third item, which said, “Could it be possible that the good ladies of a certain medical charity are following in the footsteps of Dr. Allen in his nefarious use of the Benevolent Association to ruin good women and commit malpractice?”

  Ella read the term “ladies of a certain medical charity” out loud and said, “Jocko, Sean, are you saying that they are talking about the Pacific Dispensary?”

  “I don’t know. But how many medical charities are there run by women?” Jocko responded, his brow furrowed.

  Ella nodded, thinking furiously. There actually were a good number of charities run by women, like the Ladies’ Protection and Relief Society and the Scandinavian Ladies Aid Society, but none of them provided medical services. And then there was the Female Lying-in Hospital, but that wasn’t run by women. Could it be just a coincidence that this item showed up after Mr. Truscott’s letter to the dispensary in which he threatened to sue the dispensary for malpractice? Could he have gone to the newspapers with his suspicions?

  She said, “What is this about Dr. Allen, the man who is the director of the Benevolent Association?”

  Jocko said, “Sean reminded me about a big story in the Chronicle a couple of years ago. Sold us a lot of papers. They’d uncovered this big scandal, all about Dr. Allen using funds from the society he runs to set up a young girl as his mistress. I remember thinking I’d like that kind of charity…giving me a nice place to live, fancy clothes.”

  Sean piped up, “If’n I remember right, this doctor gave the girl and her mother nearly a thousand dollars! Paper pointed out that most people who were helped by that society didn’t get more than two dollars to help them out.”

  Jocko added, “Then, if I remember right, the man forced the girl to take something to get rid of her child when she turned up pregnant. I thought there was some sort of charges brought, but the story just died away. And I guess the man was pretty connected. Doctor like that might hold too many secrets, so nothing happened to him.”

  Ella shook her head and said, “Why would the Chronicle bring it up again, if nothing came of it?”

  Jocko said, “I don’t know. But, Sean, tell the doctor about the man.”

  “What man?” Ella asked.

  Sean slapped his cap against his leg, nervously. “Well, miss, on Monday afternoon when I came to visit Jocko, I noticed a man hanging out in the empty lot across the street. Looked like he was up to no good. I remember thinking he might be checking out the dispensary. Looking for drugs, you know, figuring a place like this might have stuff.”

  When Sean looked over at Jocko, Ella thought about Jocko’s own history. She wondered how many of his newsboy friends like Sean might have helped him out by stealing some of the morphine he needed to make his pain bearable.

  Sean continued, “I told Jocko, and he said he’d tell someone.”

  “I told Matron, soon as Sean left. She said she would remind all the staff to keep the back door locked and to lock the front door when there wasn’t someone in reception.”

  Ella remembered Mrs. McClellan mentioning that she’d given this instruction, but it was standard practice for the dispensary in the evenings, so she didn’t think anything of it. Thank goodness there were two narrow windows on either side of the front door so it would be easy to check to see who was asking to be let in.

  She said, “Thanks, Sean, Jocko. We can’t be too careful. But I don’t understand what you think this man and this newspaper article have in common.”

  Sean said, “The thing is, miss, he was outside again tonight when I came to bring Jocko the paper. Only this time, as I came down the street, he stopped me. Offered me a cigarette, asked me what my business was with you all. I told him I was visiting a patient and took off before he could ask me anything else. But when I told Jocko about it, he got the notion maybe the guy is a reporter trying to dig up dirt to put in the papers. If’n so, sounds like somebody has it out for you all…which would be a real shame.”

  After making the evening rounds with Mrs. McClellan, Ella peeked out of her attic window in the futile attempt to get a glimpse of the man Sean had described as tall, dark, with a mustache and beard. This could have described half the male population of San Francisco, including Richard Truscott. But with only the glow of the gas lamps at each end of the block, the empty lot was in complete darkness. She almost convinced herself that she saw a flash of light that could have come from a match…lighting a cigarette? But she thought it was probably just her imagination. It was a cold, cloudy night, with wind whipping up from the southwest, so it was unlikely that the man was still there.

  Before she headed up to bed, she made one last round to check that all the first floor windows were closed and locked, as well as double-checking the front door and the dispensary back door down in the basement. Mrs. McClellan told her she would alert the night staff not to go out for any reason at all…even if someone came and rang the emergency bell located outside the back entrance to the dispensary. This bell that would also ring up in Ella’s attic room, so she would be alerted if that were the case. Occasionally, if someone in the neighborhood became so ill they
couldn’t wait until morning, they would come fetch Ella, who would come to their home, bringing her doctor’s bag with her. She hated these middle of the night emergencies, but a couple of times she knew she’d saved a woman’s or a child’s life by attending to them right away. She just prayed that none of those emergencies happened tonight.

  Unfortunately, the dispensary was like a small village, and the word that some man was seen loitering around outside had swept through the building. Probably one of the nurses overheard Sean and Jocko talking to her and then told the others. Then one of the servants got hold of the information and mentioned it in passing to one of the patients as they removed the dinner trays. The result was that she and Mrs. McClellan got a lot of worried questions as they did their evening rounds. They tried their best to assure everyone about how thorough their security measures were, but Ella couldn’t help worrying that the last thing the dispensary needed right now was for its patients to feel unsafe.

  Most of the patients seemed satisfied by their responses. However, the young girl, Hilda, had gotten quite agitated. She was already subject to nightmares, and Ella was afraid this wouldn’t help any. Poor thing.

  Sighing, she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and wondered if there was any way she was going to be able to sleep tonight…no matter how exhausted she was. This was the first time since she started at the dispensary in June that she wished there was a permanent male staff member. She knew that some institutions had male porters or orderlies. There were a number of male nurses in the city who specialized in working on male wards in the hospitals or doing home nursing for men. But Dr. Brown told her they had decided that, given the mission of the Pacific Dispensary and the fact that all the patients were women and children, they should stick to an all-female staff.

  Yet the idea that there might be some hooligan who was going to break in seemed less threatening than the idea that it could be some reporter working on writing some damaging article about the dispensary. They could survive a theft…it might even bring them some sympathy from the community. Could they survive an article that suggested the dispensary was doing abortions?

  And if not a reporter, what if the man outside had been Richard Truscott himself? Plotting some act of vengeance?

  Of course not. That idea is too fantastical.

  She was just tired. Yet she didn’t want to dismiss her concerns, either.

  Mrs. Dawson had mentioned that she would be coming back to the dispensary on Friday to see if she had any responses to the letters she had written on Monday. She hoped that at that point she would be able to finalize her report…or at least write a draft, pending resolution of the problem with Mr. Truscott. But if the article or the man outside had anything to do with the Truscotts, then shouldn’t Mrs. Dawson know right away?

  With a sense of relief, Ella knew what she would do. Before she retired, she would sit down and write a letter to Annie, outlining her concerns about the article and the man outside. Then, first thing in the morning, she would send one of the servants to take it directly to Mrs. Dawson, asking her if she could come tomorrow to advise her. She would send Megs, who was a sensible girl and would enjoy the outing.

  Going over to her desk to pull out some writing paper, Ella turned up the lamp and sat down to write her letter. If all went well, she would only have to deal with medical emergencies between now and when Annie Dawson arrived…and those she felt equipped to handle.

  Chapter 21

  Thursday afternoon, March 2, 1882

  Pacific Dispensary for Women and Children

  * * *

  Annie noticed that the front door of the dispensary was locked this afternoon, so she had to ring the bell. New security measures? No doubt in response to the strange man Ella had written about in the letter she sent this morning.

  Ella Blair opened the door for her and said, “Thank you so much for coming, Mrs. Dawson.”

  Annie, taking off her coat and hanging it in the hall, said, “Of course. I’m just sorry I wasn’t able to come any earlier today, but I had an already scheduled appointment.”

  Her heart had sunk this morning when she read Ella’s letter about the stranger who had been loitering outside the dispensary and the existence of the Chronicle piece, which she hastily looked for in her pile of this week’s papers. She couldn’t fault the young doctor for worrying about whether the newspaper article and the loitering man might have something to do with Dr. Skerry and the Truscotts.

  Having spent yesterday reading through the back issues of the medical journal put out by Dr. Skerry, on top of Nate’s report on the role the doctor seemed to be playing in stirring up Richard Truscott, Annie had already begun to worry that Dr. Brown had left her with much more than a financial mess to clean up.

  Imogen Skerry seemed especially keen to target wealthier citizens in her journal. The richer and more prominent the person, the more Dr. Skerry spewed forth a venomous mix of gossip, innuendo, and resentment, pretending she was simply interested in “making the world a better place.”

  And she seemed to hold a particular grudge against the Grangers, both the father and the son. Dr. Harry Granger, the senior, had sparked her ire when he advocated for the acceptance of Dr. Brown and Dr. Wanzer into the California Medical Society, while rejecting her own application. In a later journal article, she blamed Dr. Harrison Granger, the junior, who sat on the San Francisco City Board of Health, for her failure to be appointed one of the city’s quarantine inspectors. In addition, and Annie found this very interesting, Dr. Skerry had hoped to get local doctors to support her plan to set up a medical school for women in San Francisco. She seemed to feel her failure to get enough investors to back this enterprise was because the Grangers and female doctors like Dr. Brown were against her.

  By coincidence, the appointment Annie had earlier today was with Miss Greenstock, who with her parents ran the Methodist Chinese Domestic Mission. Having read a series of negative articles that Dr. Skerry wrote about the San Francisco Chinese community and the charities like the one that the Greenstocks ran, she felt she had to ask her if she had any idea why Dr. Skerry seemed so hostile to the Chinese and the charities that tried to help them.

  Miss Greenstock actually laughed and told Annie it was all political. Turned out that Skerry’s brother had been an active supporter of Denis Kearney’s Workingmen’s Party, who were both anti-capitalist and anti-Chinese. Skerry’s anti-Chinese articles were written in 1878, and Miss Greenstock assumed they were designed to help her brother gain favor in Kearney’s eyes. Miss Greenstock confided that Dr. Skerry had even tried to volunteer for the Chinese Mission, saying she wished to help provide medical care for the Chinese women who lived in their refuge. Thankfully, one of the mission’s members had read some of her anti-Chinese screeds. Miss Greenstock said her suspicion was that Skerry had hoped to come up with some bit of scandal to use in her journal, so the mission board politely rejected Skerry. And hired Dr. Brown instead, which no doubt added to Skerry’s grievance against Dr. Brown.

  Annie felt this made it even more likely that Dr. Skerry had found the Truscotts the perfect mechanism for exacting vengeance on the Grangers and Dr. Brown. She didn’t look forward to telling Ella this. The poor young woman looked so tired; it couldn’t be easy being the sole physician responsible for the health and well-being of scores of women and children.

  Ella pointed to the office desk and said, “I put together all the letters that have come to the dispensary since Monday. I assume they are in response to the letters you wrote or perhaps additional bills. Do you want to go over them before we talk about my concerns and whether I should send a telegram to Dr. Brown about what was written in the Chronicle?”

  Annie said, “Yes, let me just open them and see what we have. Why don’t you have a seat? You look like you have been run off your feet.”

  Ella smiled wanly and said, “I’m afraid it has been a trying couple of days, although I am pleased to say we have a brand new healthy baby boy, who came into the worl
d early Wednesday morning.”

  “That’s good news,” said Annie, remembering how hard everyone had worked during her own protracted delivery.

  “Yes, mother and child are doing well. However, the children’s wing has had its own brand of excitement. While two of our young patients have improved enough so that they will be returning home tomorrow, we have had a couple of difficult cases, as well. There are two infants who have been seriously ill, although in both cases it looks like they may have turned the corner. But of course all of this has been a bit trying. Then the young girl Hilda had a particularly bad night last night. She has nightmares, and it took me some hours to get her calmed down. Given the precariousness of her pregnancy, that level of upset is unhealthy, but Dr. Harrison Granger cautioned against giving her a sleeping draught.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about both the children and Hilda. I wasn’t able to bring Kathleen with me today. She had too many duties. She did say that Hilda got visibly upset on Monday when Kathleen asked her if she had made any friends among her fellow servants, so she didn’t pursue that. Maybe it was her employer who got her pregnant and a fellow servant who gave her whatever she took to try to end the pregnancy. That would explain her reticence on these subjects. Sounds like the poor child has had a hard life so far.”

  Ella nodded. “And here I am, grumbling because I’ve lost a little sleep over the past few days. Dr. Granger would say that a doctor who was getting a full night’s sleep probably wasn’t doing his…or her job properly. But, here I am, keeping you from the letters, and I know your time is limited. I will go and get us both some tea.”

  As Annie took up the letter-opener from the desk top and began to slit open the envelopes, she found herself hoping against hope that there would be a conciliatory letter from Richard Truscott, maybe even a check, because she did not relish telling Ella Blair about what she had learned about Dr. Skerry. The poor young woman had dark circles under her eyes, and Annie would swear she had lost weight in the past few days.