A DEAD CHILD’S HEART AT 549 HENRY ST (1877)
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The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
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(The following story comes from the Brooklyn Union-Argus, Mon., 14 May 1877.)
A child fourteen months old of Mr. James Menagh’s, of No. 15 Dennet place, died on Saturday of heart disease. The case was a curious one, and had attracted general interest in the Long Island College Hospital, where it had been treated for a short time.
A few days before its death Dr. Henry Read, of No. 549 Henry street, attended it. He, too, became interested. When the child died he refused to give the parents a certificate of death unless be was permitted to make a post-mortem examination of the body.
After some hesitation this was granted. He made the autopsy, signed the certificate and took his departure. Mrs. Menagh suspected, either from his manner or from the package that be carried, that something was wrong, and she examined the child’s body.
Cutting the thread with which the doctor had sewn up the stomach, she found that the heart was missing.
The doctor’s unwillingness to grant the certificate was at once explained. He wanted the heart for anatomical study. The parents were indignant, and notified Captain Reilley, of the Eleventh. Detective Daly accompanied the father to Dr. Read’s residence, and the latter delivered up the heart, which was restored to the body, and they were to be buried today.
Mr. Menagh declined to proceed against the doctor, and there the case dropped.
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