I recently read a book that was much more than what I expected it to be.
It’s called Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, by Brad Ricca.
I expected a book about a female detective who solved crimes in 1917 New York City.
Instead, I got a book about a society woman, Mary Grace Quackenbos Humiston (1869-1948) who became a lawyer in 1904, and set up a company she called the Peoples Law Firm.
Mrs. Humiston spent the next 44 years of her life defending women and immigrants from injustice (often as an investigator, not lawyering in a courtroom).
There are several cases covered in Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.
There’s the featured story of 17-year-old Ruth Cruger, a middle-class girl who mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Manhattan.
There’s the story of German immigrant Charles Stielow, who was nearly electrocuted at Sing Sing, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of John Snowden, a Black man who was slandered and hung in 1918, for a murder he didn’t commit.
There’s the story of several thousand Italian immigrants, kept in feudal bondage (1895-1912) by Southern plantation owners.
In a press conference on 6/24/1917, Grace Humiston outlined her plan for keeping girls safe from predators:
New York does not yet realize how systematic the danger is for girls who live in it. . . Had I the power, I would cause to be inserted in the laws of every state an act that would make the tempting of a girl a serious offense, punished by an adequate penalty. I would call such practice ‘criminal persuasion’ and . . . if the white slaver knew he violated the law at the beginning of his ‘trade’ there would be fewer girls in the underworld. [Italics mine.]
She went on to discuss stationing agents throughout big cities, and keeping girls safe after they were rescued, so they could “start life anew,” free from shame.
In an America shaped by Grace Humiston, a Jeffrey Epstein would not have been possible.
The Ruth Cruger case made Mrs. Humiston famous.
Ruth Cruger was reported as a missing person, by her parents, after visiting a motorcycle repair shop to have her ice skates sharpened.
The New York police force failed Ruth Cruger, because they assumed she was just a “wayward girl,” one of the 1,000-1,500 girls who disappeared yearly in 1917 Manhattan.
After months of searching, Mrs. Humiston (and her chief detective, Julius Kron), discovered Ruth’s battered, dismembered body buried in the cellar below Alfredo Cocchi’s Metropolitan Motorcycle repair shop.
Alfredo Cocchi happened to be a favorite fellow of the New York City motorcycle police.
Although Ruth was last seen near Cocchi’s shop, the police had quickly ruled him out as a suspect.
The dynamics are the same: girls vulnerable to the lechery of older men.
The terminology is different.
During the early 1900’s, newspaper headlines shouted about “white slavery” and “missing maidens.”
Today, we talk about “human trafficking” and “exploited children.”
Proportionally, there are more people in situations that involve human trafficking (and forced labor), in the 2020’s, than there were a hundred years ago.
In West Shelby, New York, Mrs. Humiston didn’t believe that illiterate German immigrant Charles Stielow had murdered his employer Charles Phelps, and Phelp’s housekeeper Margaret Wolcott.
There was no evidence for him doing so.
Mrs. Humiston, and journalist Sophie Irene Loeb (1876-1929), were instrumental in staving off Stielow’s execution until his innocence could be proven.
Eventually, a junk dealer, Erwin King; and a wandering homeless man, Clarence O’Connell, confessed to the murders of Phelps and Wolcott.
In August of 1917, Mrs. Humiston also didn’t believe John Snowden had murdered an Annapolis white pregnant woman (Lottie Mae Brandon).
However, this time, Humiston’s efforts to save an innocent man failed.
Although there was scant evidence, and authorities received an anonymous confession to the rape and murder, soon after Snowden was hanged, he didn’t receive a posthumous pardon until 2001.
In July of 1907, Mrs. Humiston began spending her time as a hands-on detective in the service of several thousand Italian immigrants who worked picking cotton on Southern plantations.
Families were recruited directly from Italy, and also from factories in cities like New York.
(That’s how Humiston discovered the case.)
After the immigrants arrived in the American South, they were installed in windowless hovels, and forced to buy all their food and clothing from the company store.
Young children worked alongside their parents.
Italian babies died from malnutrition.
The situations of these sharecropper families reminded me of the 1955 hit* “Sixteen Tons”:
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go.
I owe my soul to the company store.
Working on gigantic 13,000-acre farms like Sunny Side Plantation (in Arkansas) at first may have reminded Italians of the “mezzadria” system in Italy.
“Mezza” means “half;” in Italy, Italian tenant farmers received half of the crops, in return for working the land.
(The “mezzadria” system didn’t collapse in Italy until the 1970s.)
On Southern plantations, however, the families were overcharged for goods and services, fell into debt to the plantation owners, and many sank into abject poverty.
On 3/31/1910, Grace Humiston testified before Congress about Sunny Side plantation, and other issues related to immigration reform.
She talked about agents fooling immigrants into providing labor.
She discussed expert masons sent to labor on cotton plantations, and skilled tailors who could only get work in mines.
She testified:
The point is that we Americans are exploiting the aliens . . . For while our Federal laws are excellent for keeping them out of the country, we show a noticeable lack of interest in them after they are admitted.
Mrs. Humiston’s time in the limelight didn’t last long.
Soon after she became well-known, she lost her shining reputation because of exaggerated claims she made about young women being abused near Camp Upton, an army training camp in Long Island (1917).
As a result of the uproar, Police Commissioner Arthur Woods revoked her badge, and her credibility was ruined.
This was a tragedy, because if Mrs. Humiston had kept her ties to the Government, and to the N.Y.C. police department, she might have accomplished more good work within the system.
*“Sixteen Tons” is a folk song about coal miners. It was written, and first performed, by Merle Travis (1917-1983), in 1946. The song became a big hit in 1955, when sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991).
