On this day, 127 years ago, The Philadelphia Item reported a heartbreaking story. Officer McMurtrie of the 2nd & Christian Street Station picked up my ancestor, Mary, and her three children on the streets of Southwark, Phila, and brought them to the station house. They were hungry & exhausted.
The newspaper article is featured verbatim in the novel The Oystercatcher of Southwark. You can take a sneak peek here:
Her Pitiful Story - Homeless with three young children - Picked up by Police
This is the actual article that our newfound cousin, Phylis, found in the National Archives in DC. If you've read the novel, you'll know what it reports. (If you haven't read the novel, I'm not going to ruin it with spoilers here).
My Nana, Mollie, and her two siblings were placed in the care of the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty.
The SPCC existed to remove children from neglectful & abusive situations and care for them in a halfway house until they could be transported to one of the many orphanages in the Philadelphia region.
The SPCC took Mollie to St. Vincent's Orphanage in North Philadelphia on August 3, 1897. She was an orphan until her Aunt, Mary's sister Congetta, retrieved her when she was ten years old.
Years later, in the 1940s, Mollie requested her file from St. Vincents. Take a look. Notice the small circular photo of her mother, Mary? Does that look familiar? The photo was later used as the model for the portrait of Mary that hung in my Nana's home for years and inspired the cover of my novel, The Oystercatcher of Southwark, decades later.
I hope the novel has helped release Mary from the confines of history, where her story had been silenced for 127 years. I hope I have given her a voice.
If you are interested in reading The Oystercatcher of Southwark, you can find it on Amazon!
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