Item. Comstock’s men went through the Campbells’ place before I could get there and came away with pamphlets that have got him yelling in the D.A.’s ear. Haven’t been able to get close enough to know what exactly he found but I’m working on it.
Item. I’ve had a tail on Campbell since Friday 3 pm, nothing to report there.
Item. Belmont thinks that if we can shake loose from Comstock and the damn pamphlets that will put an end to the whole mess by Tuesday and the Verhoevens can get on the next ship.
Item. Comstock is one of the jurors. Belmont did his best to get him thrown off but no luck so far. I should know more before the hearing starts on Monday.
O.M.
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WHEN IT WAS his turn, Jack took his time in the bathroom, thinking about Oscar’s letter, trying to draw from the words the things he would have read otherwise from the man’s face. He gave up finally with the realization that the morning would bring a long and difficult day, and they both needed their sleep. And still, the idea of Anna waiting for him in bed made him want her.
There was a lock on the bedroom door and Jack was glad of it, because he didn’t intend to sleep in anything but bare skin, as he always had. He stripped down while she watched him, stretched out on her side, trying to stay awake.
When he got under the covers she smiled at him sleepily and held out her arms for his kiss, gentle as it was. By the time he had made himself comfortable the dusk had filled the room, and Anna was asleep.
He lay awake for a long time, thinking of the Campbell boys and of Oscar’s letter. In the morning he’d walk with Anna to the New Amsterdam and they would talk. With that idea in his head he fell asleep and dreamed of the sailboats on Raritan Bay, moving farther and farther out of sight.
26
NEW YORK SUN
Monday, May 28, 1883
NO TRACE OF MISSING CAMPBELL BOYS
DID JANINE CAMPBELL SUFFER FROM PUERPERAL INSANITY?
On Tuesday of last week, Mrs. Janine Campbell calmly lied to her husband about her plans for the next day. She told him she was taking their four sons to spend a week with their cousins in the countryside.
“Those boys loved it here,” Mrs. Harold Campbell, sister-in-law to the deceased, told the Sun. “They never wanted to go home. All the fresh air and good food, and the freedom to play. It breaks my heart to think of them lost, out there in the world wondering where their mother is, and why she left them. Janine can’t have been in her right mind.”
An autopsy determined that Mrs. Campbell underwent an illegal operation sometime on Tuesday or Wednesday, a fact her husband will not credit.
Nevertheless, physicians are agreed that she did indeed have an abortion. How she managed to travel out of town is less certain. “She must have been fevered and in terrible pain,” said Dr. Hannibal Morgan of Bellevue. “I can only imagine that she dosed herself with opiates.”
Thus far detectives have been unable to find anyone who saw Janine Campbell traveling with her boys that Wednesday, but inquiries are still being conducted.
By all accounts Mrs. Campbell was a virtuous woman who kept a spotless home and showered her sons with maternal affection. None of her neighbors have a bad word to say about her.
“She was just three months out of childbed,” noted Dr. Morgan. “This has all the hallmarks of puerperal insanity. In extreme cases even murder cannot be ruled out.”
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NEW YORK TIMES
Monday, May 28, 1883
INQUEST BEGINS TODAY
JURY OF EMINENT PHYSICIANS TO RULE ON CAMPBELL DEATH
Coroner Lorenzo Hawthorn has released the names of the jurors who will hear evidence in the inquest into the death of Mrs. Janine Campbell. They are Dr. Morgan Hancock of Women’s Hospital; Dr. Manuel Thalberg, lead physician at the German Dispensary; Dr. Nicholas Lambert, a forensics specialist at Bellevue; Dr. Abraham Jacobi of Children’s Hospital and president of the New York Medical Association; Dr. Josiah Stanton of Women’s Hospital; and Dr. Benjamin Quinn, surgeon on the faculty at both Bellevue’s School of Medicine and the Woman’s Medical School. In addition, Anthony Comstock will serve on the jury as a representative of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
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