Family Secrets

Note: I’m breaking with my usual blog routine. This is a story about a possible crime that happened in my own family.

Family secrets tend to lurk, like rotten apples, in family trees. But eventually they have to fall on the ground. One of the best-kept secrets in my family was the fate of my grandfather’s sister, May Plowman Moody.

May died on November 4, 1913 at the People’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. She was 27 years old when she died. According to her death certificate she moved to Chicago from Cedar Rapids, Iowa in April 1913, about seven months before her death. Her husband, Frank Moody died of natural causes in Cedar Rapids in May 1912. The couple had two small sons at the time of Frank’s death.

On the night of November 3, 1913, May, suffering from intense abdominal pain, was taken to People’s Hospital in Chinatown, several miles south of where she lived. She suffered intense pain throughout the night and died the next morning.

According to Hugh Cameron, the informant on her death record, May lived at the Valencia Hotel in Chicago and worked as a cashier before she died. Located at 1311 Michigan Avenue, the hotel is listed in the 1910 Chicago city directory, but it’s not listed in any later directories. It was probably more of a boarding house with aspirations than an actual hotel. The building was torn down decades ago.

Cameron, a life-long Chicago resident, was old enough to be May’s father. Though he spelled her first name incorrectly, he knew her well enough to correctly provide her father’s name and country of birth, along with her precise date of birth for her death certificate. I never figured out how they met, but it’s possible it was on a visit Cameron made to Cedar Rapids in March 1913. The details of their relationship remain a mystery.

Evidently Cameron knew how to get in touch with May’s father, because her body was sent back to Cedar Rapids. My grandfather and his brother paid for her burial. End of story? Not quite.

An unexplained death necessitates an inquest. The inquest into May’s death was held at People’s Hospital the morning she died. I. Clark Gary, the founder and physician in charge of the hospital, testified that May’s doctor brought her to People’s Hospital the night before her death. She was admitted, but for some unexplained reason she was given no treatment at the hospital.

Cameron’s inquest testimony tells a different tale than the one he told for her death certificate. He claimed May lived with him in a flat at 61 E. 12th Street, a block and a half from the Valencia Hotel. The area, close to the railroad tracks, was then full of industrial buildings and warehouses. The building where they lived would have been just west of two famous Chicago landmarks, the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum, though neither was there in 1913. 12th Street was renamed Roosevelt Road in 1919 and 61 E. 12th Street succumbed to the wrecking ball years ago.

Cameron also stated that at the time of her death, May worked as his “house keeper.” He gave his occupation is “restaurant keeper.” However he’s listed in Chicago city directories from that time working as a bartender.

The doctor treating May before she died was Albert McEvers. His office was located at 1201 Wabash, just a few steps away from 61 E. 12th Street.

McEvers was listed as a veterinary surgeon in the 1912 Chicago city directory, but by 1913 he was listed as a physician in the city directory. The Official Register of Legally Qualified Physicians,  lists McEvers as having graduated from the Chicago College of Medicine and Surgery in 1912.

With the goal of serving working class patients, Peoples’ Hospital was a block and a half west of the notorious vice neighborhood—the south side Levee District. According to Chicago as a Medical Center the hospital was “well supplied with operating rooms.” After undergoing several name changes it closed in 1991 and the building was torn down.

Shortly after she died Dr. Joseph Springer performed a postmortem on May’s body at the hospital. Springer found that she bled to death after her “tubular” pregnancy ruptured. When a tubal (ectopic) pregnancy occurs, the embryo implants in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus. When the embryo grows too large the tube ruptures.

Timely surgical intervention might have saved May’s life. By the early twentieth century, surgical treatment of ectopic pregnancy was well accepted and available in a large cities, provided the patient was taken to a good hospital with experienced diagnosticians, surgeons and operating rooms. If the intention had been to try to save her life, May could have been taken to St. Luke’s Hospital at 1439 S. Michigan Avenue. It was a large hospital with operating rooms that was very close to where she lived.

The inquest was carried out by the Cook County Coroner’s Office, which was then headed by Peter M. Hoffman. Hoffman, who would later be elected sheriff of Cook County, was indicted on corruption charges and served a month in jail in 1925. However Hoffman was not present at the inquest. It was handled by one of his deputy coroners, William Ostrum. Ostrum falsified the statements of Hugh Cameron and two other witnesses, Arthur Goldstein and John McCambridge, by writing their statements and signing the men’s names himself.

According to Cameron’s statement May was “operated upon” by Dr. McEvers about a month before her death. Cameron claimed that May had not had her period (“her visitors”) for six weeks before her death, making her about eight weeks pregnant. Nonetheless he stated he was satisfied that May was “not aborted.” He was not a medical expert, so presumably this comment was included to shield him from suspicion that he tried to obtain an abortion for her. Abortion, of course, was illegal at the time. Cameron was the only witness whose statement included a mention of abortion.

Arthur Goldstein (who I was unable to find in any Chicago city directory) was listed in the inquest as a “waiter.” He attested to the truth of Cameron’s statement, though his relationship to Cameron and May, if any, was not explained. McCambridge, a police officer, gave his opinion that May died a “natural death and no foul play to the case.” The officer also claimed there were no other witnesses to the case.

Since Ostrum wrote out and signed the statements of the three men, it’s impossible to know how accurate their testimony was.

The three doctors—McEvers, Gary and Springer—wrote and signed their own statements. The statements were brief and amounted to affirming that May had an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, resulting in her death.

The inquest jurors, some of who could barely sign their names, appear to have been men who were patients at the hospital.

The inquest leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Why did Ostrum fill out some of witness statements and sign them himself, including the signature of his boss, Hoffman? Why did May have no belongings, not even clothing (other than a “shield” or menstrual pad), according to the “effects and estate” evidence sheet? She must have been wearing something when she arrived at the hospital.

Dr. McEvers didn’t mention in his statement any treatment he provided to May. What was the operation a month he performed before her death? Was it an abortion? A doctor who performed an abortion and got caught would lose his license and might even go to prison. (Search on the word “abortion” for case examples.)

Being an inexperienced physician, possibly McEvers didn’t realize May had a tubal pregnancy—a condition that would have made an abortion unsuccessful. Maybe when she had abdominal pain a month after he aborted her, he tried a second abortion. Or possibly he realized then that the pregnancy was tubal and, fearing that the earlier abortion would be found out, he took her to People’s Hospital.