On August 26, 1922, Catherine Wainwright died at Nassau Hospital, Long Island, New York.
Monday, August 21
At the inquest, Dr. Joseph B. Musante testified that on the morning of Monday, August 21, he was called to Catherine's house by her friend and attorney, John C. Wait. Dr. Musante believed that Catherine was suffering from "a gastro-intestinal infection." She had told him that she'd been suffering from violent bouts of vomiting since the previous Saturday, when she had gone into New York City for lunch with Wait, and she believed she was suffering from food poisoning. Dr. Musante testified that he provided two prescriptions for Catherine.
He returned that evening. Catherine's mother, Catherine Cusack, said that she had given her daughter one of the prescriptions but hadn't filled the rhubarb and soda prescription because it had been lost. However, Dr. Musante testified, he encountered Wait at the house shortly thereafter. Wait had said that he was a chemist and that he had read the prescription and destroyed it because "he had better soda in the house." However Musante said, Wait also indicated that he hadn't given Catherine the superior soda either.
Tuesday, August 22
Dr. Musante was again at Catherine's home on August 22. Catherine was refusing to go to the hospital. Dr. Musante testified that while he was at the house he got the impression that Wait was either a family member or a very close friend. That evening, Dr. Musante said, Wait stopped at his office and asked questions about Catherine's condition. When Dr. Musante had asked why he was so interested and whether he was related to Catherine, Wait ended the conversation and left.
Wednesday, August 23
Catherine was declining instead of improving, so Dr. Musante called in another doctor, Gustave Fensterer, who was a surgeon at Nassau Hospital. Dr. Fensterer didn't take no for an answer from Catherine. He admitted her to the hospital. Because of an unusual odor to Catherine's breath, Dr. Fensterer suspected that she had ingested poison.
For reasons not clear in the news coverage, Dr. Fensterer suspected that the specific poison was mercury. Also, again for reasons not clear in the news, he performed an operation on Catherine and found evidence that she had undergone a criminal abortion three or four days previously. However, he could not determine if the abortion had been done with drugs or instruments.
Catherine herself was no help in clearing up the mystery. She denied having ingested any mercury recently but said that she had used bichloride of mercury occasionally in the past.
Thursday, August 24
Wait came to the hospital and spoke to Dr. Fensterer and a resident, Dr. Santos Lucent, who had assisted Dr. Fensterer in the surgery. The doctors told Wait that Catherine was fatally ill and asked who he was. He said that he was the one that was going to pay Catherine's bills. Wait then told the doctors that he was going to reach out to Catherine's husband.
Catherine and her husband, Robert C. Wainwright, had originally lived in Springfield, Illinois. They had been married about four years when they moved to New York City along with their young daughter the April prior to Catherine's death.
So Where Was Catherine's Husband?
Probate records reveal the likely reason Catherine decided to abort her unborn baby. They indicate that "in the early part of the year 1922 he went to South America as a prospector and civil engineer to prospect, locate and develop hydro-electric powers,..." and that he was working and living "somewhere in the Cordilera Mountains between the Central and Easter Cordilera in the headwaters of the Magdalena River, with headquarters in and about La Mesa; that he makes occasional trips to Bogota; that said District is a wild mountainous country with poor transportation and communication, which makes communicatoin with said Robert C. Wainwright uncertain and infrequent,; that to secure waivers of citation from said Robert C. Wainwright would require at least three to four months and possibly much longer, as the executaition of such papers would require [Robert] to go to some large city where there is a consul of the United States of America; that [Robert] in a communication... expressed his belief that he could not return from South America for a period of eighteen months to two years."
According to probate records, Catherine's survivors included her husband, parents, daughter, sister, two nephews, and an aunt. Her estate was valued at $18,000 dollars, which is just over $337,000 adjusted for inflation.
Sources:
- "Lawyer Wait May Testify in Mystery of Woman's Death," The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 30, 1922
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