My Notorious Life (45 page)

A
t last in July came the Monkey Show of my trial. In the court of general sessions, I appeared before Government lawyer Frederick Tallmadge, Associate Justice Merritt, and two aldermen.

RESPLENDENT, the
Times
said I was, dressed in black satin with a white bonnet and white mantilla of Spanish lace. “Madame DeBeausacq,” they wrote, “swept into the courtroom fashionably attired as if she were a gentlewoman.”

Not so fashionable was my reluctant young accuser Cordelia Purdy, who did not sweep but slank through a door behind the judge’s chair and took her place at a table to my left, where she shrunk down childish with her head hung and her tiny hands folded in her lap like it was not me accused, but herself. She was no longer the fairy sprite I seen when she came to my door, but a drab moth in a plain gray dress and a veil, which despite the hideous heat was heavy and black.

The front of the court was crowded with lawmen cloaked in dark robes. They stroked their beardy chins and cleared their throats so their Adam’s apples dunked and rose. They rattled their papers and stuck their important hairy hands in their important pockets. Their eyes fell on me hard as pebbles off a windowpane, glancing. One or two lingered long enough on my face to cause the corner of their lips to curl. They was dogs who knew their prey was weak so I smiled at them, and in the skittishness of their gaze, the
nerves of their tapping hands, the way they toyed with their mustaches, I saw they were scared of me.

As far as ladies went, it was only me and Cordelia there. Just by the space we took up, with our skirts wide around us, we was set off from the rest of the room, set up for judgment like turkeys for sale, surrounded by dark coats and the men’s hard smells of Macassar oil and walnut military shaving soap and Blackwell’s Bull Durham tobacco.

—Oye Oye, said the recorder.

—May it Please the Court, said prosecutor Tallmadge. A flap of his gray hair hung over his brow. Oh, he was a mighty unicorn, Tallmadge. A State Senator, so they said. A soldier in the war. Well I was a soldier too, in my own war, only I didn’t have no muskets or gavel, only my wits.

—Miss Cordelia Shackford, Tallmadge called her before the judge.

Cordelia now was made to swear an oath, so reluctant you would think the Bible was a hot stove the way the recorder had to hold her hand down upon it.

—Your Honor, Tallmadge said, —I must inform you that the witness is hostile and unwilling. And then he began his terrible work on her.

—State the number of times you have been pregnant.

—Five times, she said, in a whisper of shame.

—Five! And by whom?

—By . . . Mr. George Purdy.

—At the time were you married?

—He promised he would marry me, sir, but the reason I am here is because the police said if I did not speak up I would be thrown in jail and I—

—Answer the question only! By what manner and means were you delivered of your children?

Cordelia did not answer.

—By what means? By what means were you delivered?

—I was not delivered of any children.

—You stated you were pregnant. By what means, then, were you delivered?

—By . . .
abortion
, said the moth, her voice a filament of wind through the dark lace.

—We request that the witness remove her veil, said Mr. Tallmadge.

—I prefer not to, whispered Cordelia.

—You will remove your veil, the judge ordered her.

—Please no.

—You must do as asked, said Judge Merritt.

Slowly, with her two hands grasping the edge, Cordelia lifted her veil and even from a distance you could see it tremble. The gallery sat forward. There she was, pale as milk, her eyes dark bruises in their sockets. A cry escaped her as she uncovered her face, and she hid herself with her hands.

—Explain please.

She swayed and appeared delirious and when she spoke it was in the thin high register of keening. —George told me I must have the operation, because he didn’t want a scandal. And he promised he’d marry me. So I did it. Each time I did it. Now, just because you all FORCED me here, instead he’s gone and married someone else, and I went to sue him for desertion in the court—

—Only answer the question, please, Tallmadge said. —And where did you go to procure such an operation?

—First Mrs. Costello. And then . . . I don’t wish to say.

She looked at me fast and guilty like the sight of me stung her.

—You must tell the court, Miss Shackford, where you did procure this operation.

She fidgeted and quaked till at last she whispered my name. —Madame DeBeausacq. She looked right at me with eyes full of remorse. —But I’m so sorry, Madame, I’m not complaining of YOU. It’s just they said they’d jail me if I didn’t come today and I didn’t mean t—

—Miss Shackford! The judge rapped. —Answer the question only. Had you been there previous?

—No. Previous times I went to Mrs. Costello.

—And why did you choose Madame DeBeausacq in this instance?

—Because it was said she was a professional who treated ladies with kindness.

—Describe the events of that day.

Cordelia shook her head, and her hands remained pressed to her eyes as she swayed in her seat. —No no, I can’t.

—You must describe the events of January the twenty second, said Tallmadge again.

Cordelia whispered, swaying in the box. —Madame brought me to a room.

—And then?

—She told me to get upon a bed. She gave me a pillow and a tumbler of wine. When I had drunk it, she told me to lie with my feet upon two chairs.

The child spoke with long tracts of tearful silence between words.

—How did she effect it? Tallmadge pressed her. —Describe what she did.

—I prefer not to, sir.

—You must tell the court.

—I cannot. I would rather not. Please. No.

—Miss Shackford, Tallmadge said, —you are under oath.

My accuser sank further in her misery. —Madame said . . . she would have to probe me. She said I was a good brave girl and that for a moment I would feel . . . pain.

*  *  *

The newspapers next day wrote that “with much hesitation the witness proceeded to recount the treatment she received from Madame DeBeausacq, the details of which are so extremely disgusting and filthy we forbear to give publicity to them.”

Let me say right now the papers was wrong on them details. The details are of Human Kindness. These judges, these police, these reporters, are squeamish low bloodworms, half of them, consorting with cancan girls. How I know this is because them girls come to me. So do their society mistresses. Also, their wives. I know them, daughters of Judges, sisters of Prosecutors. But these robes of the law did not wish to hear the filthy details of their own sex’s duplicity, or dwell on the disgusting filthy things they did THEMSELVES, nor see the fair face of the ones they punish for their own masculine debauchery.

*  *  *

The court was breathless and still. No matter how they claimed otherwise, the neckties in that room was no better than the rabble that chased the fire
brigades of the Seventh Ward to see buildings burn for sport. They leaned forward with the thrill of it, panting practically, to listen to Cordelia’s torment.

—What did Madame do? said Tallmadge again.

—She put her hand.

—Where?

—In my . . .
privates
. And hurt me very much. I cried and she said it was nearly over. But it wasn’t. She turned her hand or some instrument round in my body like she was breaking at something. Scraping. And it hurt me so I cried out.

—After it was over and you had got up, what occurred?

—She said for me to go to bed and rest, as she would feel anxious until I was relieved of my obstruction.

—And that evening?

—I was in great agony all the night. Madame slept with me, right in the room. She gave me compresses. In the morning, about daylight, I took a great flooding. I had been very sick also and vomited. She bade me get up and sit on a stool, with a chamber below. Whilst seated there I suffered violent pain, and Madame—

—Carry on, Miss Shackford.

—Madame inserted her hand again and said it would make it easier for me, though it gave me more pain. Every pain I had, I heard something fall from my body into the chamber. Madame said be patient. One more pain and I would be through. I then got on the bed as she bid me. She again examined me with her hand. She hurt me so. I halloed out and gripped hold of her. She called me love and said I would thank her and call her Mother, and later I did thank her. She stroked my head and brought me a tray of tea and toast.

It was as she said. I stayed with her. But these were not the details that interested the whiskery officials. They did not care about my small hands, my swift skills, how I was expert at my profession.

—And when I left the premises, Cordelia continued, hysterical, —Officer Hays followed after me. He arrested me and brought me to the precinct where they had a doctor named Gunning.

Gunning? Gunning?

—And at the station the police and Dr. Gunning forced me to submit
to an inspection without my permission, said Cordelia. —And they hurt me worse even than Madame and said the inspection proved what I did. But it did not prove a thing! And they said if I didn’t confess it, it would be the worse for me—

So, I had been hunted and framed up by Dr. Gunning and his friend Applegate.

—It is Dr. Gunning also George Purdy they should arrest! Cordelia said.

By now the brave child was crying so fitfully, you could not understand her. Her words were mumbled. She was close to fainting. Exasperated, the judge rapped, and adjourned till the next day.

Outside afterwards, the crowd and the press by the courthouse was a pack of wolves, pointing.

—There she is, the ghoul of Liberty Street, they cried.

I was a ghoul to them but to my ladies I was an Angel of Mercy. If I’d have had those white wings I’d have flapped them in the face of all the ignorant coves arrayed against me that day and flown away to my daughter.

Instead Charlie came to my prison that evening, with a steak and kidney pie made by our own Rebecca, a bottle of sherry, and a lame condolence. —Perhaps they will only convict you of a misdemeanor. A year only.

—I served half that already, I said, and drained my glass trembling.

—Hush now. My husband put his hand on my arm. —Hush.

—YOU hush. It was you who advertised Madame DeBeausacq in New Haven. If it wasn’t for those ads, that Cordelia woman would’ve never walked through our doors.

—Tomorrow Morrill will have no choice but to destroy her character. He’ll say she was a prostitute.

—She was not. Jesus, she’s a child. Tell Morrill don’t put her through that.

—It’s the only way to turn the jury’s sympathy toward you. She’s ruined.

—And so am I ruined. Unless you get me out.

—How would I do that, Mrs. Jones?

—You’re the magician. Pull something out of your hat.

Charlie stroked his mustache. Then abruptly he swigged the last dreg of sherry, kissed me, and rapped on the door of the cell so the matron would come and release him.

—Where are you going?

—I’ll tell you if it works, he said, and deserted me again.

*  *  *

“Madame arrived in dark blue silk,” wrote the
Herald
about my arrival to court the next morning, “trimmed, apron-shape, with Brussels lace, gold and bugle, with one flounce, going all around the skirt; body and sleeves to match; sleeves looped up with blue satin ribbon.” Justice Merritt was in a fine pickle when I made my entrance.

—You are late, Mrs. Jones.

—Apologies. The lock on my cell door was a bit rusty.

He scowled and harrumphed but did not become truly livid until my dear lawyer Morrill called the accuser Cordelia to the witness box for cross-examination. But, where was she? She was nowheres to be seen. The Government decided to call their star witness instead.

—Dr. Benjamin Gunning, to the stand, Tallmadge said.

Dr. Gunning! Imagine. Here he came trundling down to the front, a soft white man with a fizz of white hair receding on either side of his forehead, pale and blinking as a grub in the sunlight.

—State your position and expertise, please Doctor, said Mr. Tallmadge.

—Distinguished professor of Medicine at Philadelphia Medical School, said the Grub. —Founder of the New York Medical College, board member of the American Medical College, and author of books including Principles and Practices of Obstetrics.

—And a good friend of Archbishop Hughes, too, as I recall, laughed Tallmadge very chummy.

So our Dr. Grub was a friend not just of Susan Applegate’s Papa but a friend of police and Archbishops. And now prosecutors, too, it appeared, from the simper around Tallmadge’s mouth.

—Please tell the court your experience on January twenty fifth, Tallmadge said.

—I was called to the police precinct, where I found young Miss Cordelia Shackford under arrest in a delicate state. I was asked to examine her.

I stared at Dr. G. wishing I might roll him down a hill in a spiked barrel which Mam said the English enjoyed to do to the Irish.

—I found that Miss Shackford had been recently pregnant, Gunning
continued. —When I asked where was her child? she lied and said she had not been pregnant. When pressed she said that she had had a miscarriage. Officer Hays confronted her then and she at last confessed—that Madame DeBeausacq had caused her to miscarry five times! She stated that these miscarriages had been brought about either with drugs administered by this fiendish trafficker in human life—he pointed at me—or, as in this most recent occasion, by one of her surgical interventions.

—Did Cordelia Shackford exhibit any signs of remorse at all? asked Tallmadge.

—On the contrary, said Dr. Grub. —She asked only if I might help her to sue her guardian, Purdy, for desertion, and while there’s no doubt that Mr. Purdy is a scoundrel, my duty as a medical man is to stop such abominations from recurring, as indeed they would if such monsters as THAT woman did not ply her trade in our very midst.