Coroner: It wasn’t unusual for the boys to be away from home?
Mrs. Stone: It happened maybe three times a year that she sent them off to stay with relatives. Usually it was to Mr. Campbell’s brother, the one with the farm in Connecticut, but sometimes to another brother in New Haven. She sent them away when it was time to do the spring cleaning, usually, because they were too little to help and slowed her down. One thing she never had enough of was time.
Coroner: Mrs. Campbell didn’t mention her sons to you while you waited for the ambulance?
Mrs. Stone: Not a word. She fell away into a faint and didn’t rouse again until the young doctor—Dr. Graham, who spoke before me just now—came, not a quarter hour after I sent the boy running. He made me go out while he examined her but I heard her scream—scream loud—and then she was saying she didn’t want an ambulance. But he called for the stretcher anyway, as was proper. When they took her out of the house she grabbed my hand and said, “Send word to Mr. Campbell now, Mabel, would you? Tell him he’ll find me at the New Amsterdam.” And those are the last words I heard her say. Out she went into the ambulance and then she was gone. I hardly knew what to do with myself, I was that agitated. So I cleaned the floors, there was a terrible lot of blood, you see, and I took the bedding away to soak. Next I knew Mr. Campbell was at my door, telling me his wife was dead.
Clerk: There is a question from the gallery.
Coroner: So I see. Dr. Heath was once Mrs. Campbell’s physician of record. Please go ahead, Doctor.
Dr. Heath: I am Dr. Heath. Did Mrs. Campbell ever mention me to you?
Mrs. Stone: No.
Dr. Heath: She never said she had gone to see Dr. Heath at Women’s Hospital?
Mrs. Stone: No, she did not.
Dr. Heath: Did she mention any other doctor or nurse or midwife?
Mrs. Stone: No.
Dr. Heath: Never said a word about her health?
Mrs. Stone: That’s a different question altogether. We talked from time to time about such things, as women do.
Dr. Heath: And in all those conversations she never mentioned a doctor’s name?
Mrs. Stone: Doctor, you’ll forgive me for my blunt nature, but I doubt Mrs. Campbell ever gave you a thought. She was up to her ears in work, dawn till dark and beyond. When she took ten minutes for herself, to sit down with a neighbor to have a cup of tea, you were the last thing on her mind.
Coroner: We’re off the subject. Mrs. Stone, just two more questions. When we spoke to Dr. Graham of the ambulance service he told us that Mrs. Campbell specifically requested she be delivered into Dr. Savard’s care at the New Amsterdam. Did she mention Dr. Savard to you before the ambulance arrived?
Mrs. Stone: She did not.
Coroner: This is the last matter we need to raise. Mrs. Stone, did Mrs. Campbell ever talk to you about abortion?
Mrs. Stone: Janine Campbell was a good Christian woman, sir. Mr. Campbell wasn’t the easiest of husbands but she persevered as a woman must. She obeyed and kept house and raised those boys to be polite and helpful and made sure that dinner wasn’t a single minute late and her husband’s coffee was exactly the way he liked it, and when her health failed her, she bore up under that too. She wasn’t a complainer. She never spent a day in bed except when she was new delivered.
Coroner: We have another question from someone in the gallery. Dr. Garrison, is it?
Dr. Clara Garrison: Mrs. Stone, I’m a physician and a professor at Woman’s Medical School. May I ask, did you ever notice any signs of instability in Mrs. Campbell? Some of the questions before the coroner’s jury have to do with her state of mind and her sanity. You saw her almost every day, as I understand it. Would you have an opinion on this?
Mrs. Stone: Hard work never killed anybody, that’s what my mam used to say, but it can grind a woman down to dust. Janine was tired and her spirits were low but I never heard her talk crazy or do anything but what she always did, housework and tending to the boys. She was a good mother, too, and her boys adored her. Some women take things out on their children, but Janine handled them different. She could get what she wanted with a soft word. And that’s the way she was, she worked hard, day in and day out and she looked after those boys—
Coroner: This is very difficult, I understand. Take a moment to gather your thoughts.
Mrs. Stone: She said to me once that her own father was too eager with the rod, and that she wanted something else for her boys. She didn’t have an easy life and she swallowed down more than her fair share of bile, but was no more insane than I am or you are, Dr. Garrison.
Coroner: Thank you, Mrs. Stone; you’re excused.