One such case involved Herman Romanik, a young man who recently arrived at Ellis Island from Russia. As the doctors checked him out, Herman held his breath, hoped for the best, and was rewarded with a clean bill of health and an entry into New York City. Full of hope and pride, the twenty-five-year-old Herman opened a tailor shop on Attorney Street and got to business. Through nights and into the mornings, Herman was always at the shop, mending and sewing and stitching. All the while, Herman dreamed of the day he could bring his childhood sweetheart, Lotta, over from Russia. His strong and clear image of her, full of affection, made him work all the harder.
But this story was no fairy tale; this was New York. Herman feared what might happen to Lotta at Ellis Island. Her health was not great, and many were being turned away because of the new immigration laws. So Herman saved even more money and went back to Russia to accompany her back himself. As they stood in line at Ellis Island, they were both passed as fit by the medical examiner and the Board of Special Inquiry. Herman beamed as he marched his new wife to the flat above his store in the pushcart district for their honeymoon. His wife somehow looked even more beautiful in New York than in Russia. Within a few months, the word that the couple was expecting got out to Herman’s happy customers and friends, who were sure it was a son, they said, clapping each other on the back and smiling through unruly beards.
But one day, without warning, the shop closed, and the young couple disappeared from sight. Herman was finally seen leaving the flat but then returned with two doctors, who quickly went upstairs. A week later, his new bride was taken away in a car to Bellevue, and the little tailor was left to live and work alone.
“It is nothing,” the bewildered Herman said to his neighbors. “She is sick. Crazy in the head, but it goes away by and by. Sure it will go away soon as the baby come. The doctors they say so. Sure it will go. She hurts nobody yet.”
A few days later, Herman went to Bellevue to call for his wife. He walked up and down the wide white halls, but still he could not find her. Someone looked at the paperwork and explained to Herman that his wife had entered Bellevue as a charity case. That meant that she had been transferred to the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane on Ward’s Island. They explained to Herman that because she was a public charge, she would be deported. Herman felt as if he had been shocked with electricity. He had not been able to read the English on the Bellevue entrance card he had signed and was totally ignorant of what he had done. Herman had signed away his wife’s freedom. And that of their unborn baby.
Herman went to Ward’s Island and met with Dr. Dent, his wife’s new doctor. Dent listened and offered to sign a bond to pay for the care of his wife but only until the baby came; then Herman’s family would be deported. Herman refused. But the law was clear: “an alien who shall be found a public charge from causes existing prior to landing shall be deported, as hereinafter provided, to the country whence he came at any time within one year after arrival.”
But Dr. Dent had no intention of waiting a year. He immediately notified the State Commission of Lunacy of the presence of Lotta in his institution. Dr. Dent asked that her pregnancy not be taken into consideration. She was an “alien” and insane and should be deported immediately. The commissioner general of Ellis Island, Robert Watchorn, was given the order from Washington, D.C., to deport Mrs. Lotta Romanik. Herman watched helplessly while his wife was put out on a steamer in the Hudson, due to sail at ten the following morning.
She was seven months pregnant.
Herman felt like his life was turning to sand and blowing away in the wind. A friend gave Herman a business card with Grace’s name on it. The card said that she could be “consulted and retained as attorney and counsellor at law in cases involving attendance upon the courts and otherwise, especially with a view to meeting the requirements of litigants of moderate means.”
Grace listened to Herman’s story carefully. She knew of Dr. Dent, recalling the name from the newspaper story in which the reporter Nellie Bly falsified her own insanity to uncover the horrific conditions that existed for patients on Blackwell’s Island. According to Bly’s account, when the patients in the women’s asylum heard Dent down the hall, they whispered, “Here is the devil coming.”
First, Grace set out to procure a writ of habeas corpus to delay the deportation order. She explained to Herman that this would force the court to summon his wife before a judge and provide evidence as to why they were sending her back to Russia. The writ, if successful, would at least get her off the boat for a few days and give them some time. The problem was that it was already early evening. The boat was set to sail in the morning. They were going to have to work fast.
Rising from her chair, Grace unhooked the phone. She connected to District Judge Adams, who owed her a favor. She got him to agree to issue the writ and went over to his residence just as it was getting dark. He signed it, but the Ellis Island ferry had already docked for the day. Herman had a sleepless night, but Grace told him not to worry. There was only a small distance of choppy water separating the writ from his wife. When Grace sent the document over to the commissioner of Ellis Island the next morning via her secretary, running as she sped off the ferry and onto the pier, there was only fifteen minutes left before Lotta was set to sail. Minutes later, Lotta ran into the embrace of her husband, who was just behind Grace’s envoy.
Later that day, Herman placed his wife in the New York Infirmary for Women and Children on Bleecker Street at a cost of $4.25 a day. Herman’s plan, made with Grace’s help, was to keep his wife institutionalized until the birth of their baby to avoid having the state seize control of her. Her full case could be heard in federal court later, and they could explain the whole misunderstanding to a judge. Grace didn’t foresee any problems.
But $29.75 a week was a lot of money for a tailor on Attorney Street. After a few weeks, Herman was dead broke, and the baby was still five or six weeks away. Lotta had also become more and more violent. The infirmary was getting worried about her behavior, so they looked through her records and made a phone call. The man on the other end invited the infirmary to transfer her over to his care. The infirmary agreed, and Dr. Dent hung up the phone and immediately began the paperwork to deport Lottie under the same law as before.
Once Herman was told, he quickly called Grace. Surely, she could perform her legal magic once again. But she wasn’t in her office. Her secretary told Herman that Grace had gone to Halifax with her husband for a rest and vacation. At Ellis Island, the doctors examined Lotta again and said that she was epileptic, not insane, and had been even before arriving in America.