The Alchemy of Murder (6 page)

BEFORE JUDGE DUFFY

My “amnesia” case created something of a sensation at Bellevue and soon the worst possible thing occurred: newspaper reporters were permitted in to question me and my picture appeared in the papers!

Desperate to get to Blackwell’s Island before the reporters saw through my act, I eagerly convinced two more doctors I was “hopeless.” They removed me from the ward and took me to a city wharf where about a dozen women waited to be put onto a boat.

An attendant with rough manners and whiskey breath half-dragged us onto the boat. It seemed as if we were forever on this bumpy boat ride before we were taken ashore at a landing in New York’s East River.

“What is this place?” I asked an attendant who had his fingers dug deep into the flesh of my arm.

“Blackwell’s Island,” he grinned, “a place you’ll never get off.”

THE INSANE ASYLUM

6

Blackwell’s Island

The name alone sounded depressing.

The small island was grey and gloomy on the chilly day I set foot on it. About a mile and a half long and only an eighth of a mile wide, it sat like a stepping stone in the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens. Unless you were a competitive swimmer, it was too far to swim back to land.

If I wasn’t already quite mad when I arrived, keeping my sanity in the face of conditions that have been frowned upon even at London’s notorious Bedlam quickly became a challenge.

AN INSANITY EXPERT AT WORK

The reception area was a long, narrow, austere room with bare concrete walls and barred windows. Nurses sat at a large table covered with a white bedspread in the center of the room. “Checking in” began immediately.

“Come here,” a scowling, red-faced woman at the table snapped at me.

I approached and was immediately assaulted with one rude question after another. The woman didn’t bother to look up as she penciled my answers on a sheet.

“What have you on?”

“My clothing.”

Another nurse lifted my dress and slips as if I were a child. “One pair of shoes, one pair of stockings, one cloth dress, one straw sailor hat,” and so on. When the examination was over, someone yelled, “Into the hall, into the hall.”

A kindly grey-haired patient told me that this was an invitation to supper.

“Get in line, two-by-two,” “Stand still,” “How many times must I tell you to stay in line?” As the orders were snapped, a shove and a push were administered, often accompanied with a slap on the ear.

We lined up in a hallway where open windows invited a cold draft. The shivering, thinly clad women looked lost and forlorn. Some chattered nonsense to invisible people; others laughed or cried.

The grey-haired woman who had been kind nudged me. With sage nods and pitiful uplifting of her eyes, she assured me that I shouldn’t mind the poor creatures because they were all mad. “I’ve been here before, you know,” she said. She volunteered earlier that this was her second commitment to the island. Her daughter had managed to get her released but her son-in-law had her recommitted.

When the dining room doors opened a mad rush was made for the tables. Food was already set out for each person—a bowl filled with a pinkish liquid which the patients called tea, a piece of thick-cut, buttered bread, and a saucer with five prunes.

A large, heavy-set woman pushed by me and sat down. She immediately grabbed saucers from other place settings and emptied the contents in one long gulp while holding down her own bowl. Then proceeded to empty two more. As I watched, the woman opposite me grabbed my bread.

The older woman with me offered me hers, but I declined and asked an attendant for another. The attendant glared at me as she flung a piece of bread on the table. “I see you’ve lost your memory, but not how to eat.”

The bread was hard and dry, the butter rancid. One taste of the “tea” was enough—a bitter, mineral favor, as if it had been made in copper.

“You must force down the food,” my new friend said. “If you don’t eat you’ll be sick and who knows, with these surroundings, you may go crazy.”

“It’s impossible to eat this swill.” Despite her urging, I ate nothing.

After dinner we were marched into a cold, wet concrete bathroom and ordered to undress. A patient chattering and chuckling to herself stood by the bathtub with a large, discolored rag in hand.

I refused to undress. “It’s too cold.”

Nurse Grupe, whose name tag said she was the head nurse, ordered me to undress.

“No. Heat this place first.”

She glared at me and I almost obeyed. What a poisonous disposition.

“Undress her.”

Nurses grabbed me, pulled off my clothes, and forced me into the tub. As I shivered in the cold water, the babbling woman scrubbed me with harsh soap that rubbed my skin raw. “Rub, rub, rub,” she chanted.

My teeth chattered and my lips turned blue as buckets of cold water went over my head. I yelped and Nurse Grupe slapped the back of the head.

“Shut up or I’ll give you something to yell about.”

While I was still dripping wet, they put me into a short canton flannel slip labeled across the back in large black letters,
Lunatic Asylum, B. I. H. 6
. The letters stood for Blackwell’s Island, Hall 6.

As I was led away I looked back and saw Miss Maynard, a poor, sick girl I’d met on the boat to the island. She pleaded not to be placed in the cold bath. It was useless, of course. Resistance simply inflamed Nurse Grupe’s poisonous personality.

I was taken to room 28 where a hard cot and coarse wool blanket awaited.

My wet clothes and body dampened the pillow and sheet. I tried to find some warmth with the blanket, but when I lifted it up to my chin it left my bare feet exposed.

As I lay shivering, I heard a rustle to my left. A girl sat on a bed in the dark corner. She came over and tucked another blanket around me. I was too weak and cold to even properly thank her and just muttered my gratitude.

In the morning I discovered that each patient was rationed only one blanket. The girl spent a cold night so I could have her blanket.

Her name was Josephine.

She was a prostitute, but reminded me of a little mudlark. Seventeen years old, she’d left a hungry, abusive home at eleven and did the only work she could find—selling her body on the streets. Despite the unspeakable life she’d suffered, she still reached out to the underdog.

This tarnished angel and I soon became as close as sisters.

I couldn’t help but notice that nothing about her indicated she belonged in a mad house. “Why are you here?” I finally asked.

“I was brought to the island suffering from a brain fever. I suppose I showed signs of insanity, but that left with the fever. Now I’m a prisoner. Few without family or friends ever leave this place.”

I hated the thought that she believed she’d never get out, so I confided in her. “Very soon you’re going to be leaving the asylum with me. I can provide a home and help you get work. You won’t have to go back to the streets again. Life will be much kinder to you, I promise.”

The poor dear thought I was mad! I wanted to tell her I was a reporter doing a story, but couldn’t chance my identity being revealed.

Gossiping with inmates, I found out that the asylum’s darkest secret wasn’t the cruelty toward helpless women, a horrible crime in itself, but the mysterious disappearance of inmates. Four women had disappeared from the island in the previous five months and the staff never spoke of it.

“They don’t care,” Josephine told me. “Women throw themselves into the river or drown trying to escape.”

My interest was piqued by the fact all four women were prostitutes—an unusual coincidence being that street girls only made up a small portion of the inmates. I quietly probed to get more information and soon found out no one wanted to talk about it—the patients were frightened and the nurses wanted to avoid scandal.

I was sitting on my cot making a mental list of the appalling things about the institution that I planned to write about when Josephine returned excited from a medical appointment.

She sat down beside me and whispered, “I’ve found a way to get us off the island.”

Her appointment had been with a staff doctor named Blum. He told her if she helped him with an experiment, he’d see that she gained her freedom. “I said I’d do it only if you were released, too.”

“What kind of experiment?” My first instinct was that the doctor wanted sexual gratifiction.

“I don’t know. It has to do with a scientific study. He has a lab with equipment in that shack on the old pier.”

I realized I’d seen him on the hospital grounds. He wore baggy clothes and a box hat and had a heavy beard, long hair, and thick glasses. I overheard the nurses refer to him as “the German doctor” because of his thick Eastern European accent. He had a reputation for being a loner and secretive, which wasn’t surprising. Many ordinary doctors tinkered with scientific experiments, hoping to achieve the fame a few had managed by making important discoveries.

“I heard nurses talking about him,” I said. “He’s an odd fellow who doesn’t say a word unless absolutely necessary. And he won’t let anyone near that shack of his. Nurse Grupe went out to deliver a package and he ran her off.”

“He seems a gentleman to me,” Josephine said. “I’m sure it will all work out.” She nervously worked the ring on her index finger. A cheap copper band with a small heart, the ring had been given to her by a man she loved—and who abandoned her after he tired of exploiting her body.

Seeing her so excited about getting off the island, I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. She was usually dispirited and melancholy.

“I’m sure it will. What exactly does he want you to do?”

“Tonight at midnight I’m to tell the attendant that I have stomach pain and need to go to the infirmary, that I’ve been under Dr. Blum’s care. I’m to go to his quarters instead.” She squeezed my arm. “Nellie, I promised I wouldn’t tell a soul. You won’t tell anyone, will you? Promise?”

It occurred to me that there might be another story in this for my article. If the man did plan to extort sexual favors from her, I’d see that he neither succeeded nor used his position to take advantage of any more poor women at the institute.

“I promise. But don’t be surprised if you look behind you tonight and see me.”

*   *   *

T
HAT NIGHT
I was dozing when Josephine got up to go to the doctor’s quarters. “Good luck,” I whispered as she went out the door.

I waited a few minutes to give her a head start before quickly dressing and hurrying to the attendant’s station to use the same stomach pain excuse Josephine used. We were locked in at night as if we were prisoners.

When I came out into the reception area, the night attendant wasn’t there.
No!
I should have left at the same time as Josephine. I hadn’t because I was sure the attendant wouldn’t let us leave together. I heard snoring and spotted the crazy old rub-rub-rub woman sleeping, sitting up on a bench. She was covered with a blanket. Poor thing. She probably came out of the wardroom to escape whatever devils came for her in the dark.