January, 1937: Officer McBride Inspects Specter
History Buzz writer Doug Cooper digs into a curious story.
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The History Buzz team is asked to Be On The Lookout for witty, humorous newspaper stories. I saved one from the Townsman and it sat in my dusty virtual files, waiting to be shared. A brief search on newspapers.com convinced me that this story is not all funny business.
“Disinter, Reinter Body After Officer McBride Inspects Specters at 4 A.M.” announced the headline in Andover Townsman on January 22, 1937.
The actual events took place on the Friday and Saturday prior to that issue’s publication. On Friday the 15th, Town Clerk George H. Winslow was bombarded with inquiries from Boston newspapers. The press desperately wanted to know if he had given permission for the body of Mrs. Eva Pelletier Roy to be disinterred. Winslow had not given permission. He probably had to repeat that more than once.
The superintendent of Andover’s Sacred Heart cemetery here told a reporter from Lawrence that a grave had been opened. It was up to the police department to investigate unpermitted grave openings, forthwith. Why, this blogger asks in the next century, couldn’t that wait until dawn?
Officer Frank McBride was the Andover Police department in the wee hours of the morning in 1937. “So he took his flashlight in one hand and his courage in both and went out to Corbett Street.” The Townsman wondered where all the newspapermen were and decided that said members of the press would rather ghost write.
There was a freshly opened grave in Sacred Heart Cemetery, but it was not Eva’s. Officer McBride even looked inside the pine box and saw that it was empty. The superintendent did indeed open a grave. It was for a Mrs. King, who was to be buried the following morning. “King” is Roi in French and the Townsman speculated that the superintendent had a French mind.
Come morning, the cemetery superintendent started to dig up Eva’s body. He was confident that a permit would be forthcoming. He decided to leave the coffin alone until he saw the permit. Chief of Police Dane arrived at the cemetery. Chief Dane heard from the pastor of Sacred Heart church (located in Lawrence), who heard from a lawyer in New Hampshire that a permit had been secured. Surely a police chief is aware of hearsay.
“George put an end to the legal light’s illegal moves by ordering the grave filled up again.”
Maybe George Winslow came rushing over, hollering “not so fast!” But I doubt it. The Townsman drew comparisons with a WPA project. The explanation given was that the town clerk could issue a permit to exhume only after receiving an authorization from the district attorney. The district attorney himself was in Florida and his staff would not grant an authorization unless it came from the chief of police in Berwick, Maine. Eva died in Berwick.
Eva’s body was exhumed because her mother, Annie Pelletier, insisted that Eva was poisoned. Two doctors attending Eva at her passing stated that she suffered from influenza (or pneumonia, depending on the newspaper I look in). Annie, a nurse, could not be convinced of their diagnosis. The authorities in Berwick found nothing to convince them of foul play. Although it did not name Eva’s husband Wilfred as a suspect, the Townsman mentioned their seemingly happy marriage.
In its January 19 issue, the Portsmouth Herald reported that Annie would “exhaust every legal means at her command” in an effort to have Eva’s body exhumed. As late as January 18, Annie was indicating that she would have her daughter's body exhumed privately. That would have required authorization from Andover’s Board of Health.
Annie got her wish. An autopsy was performed around January 23. The headline I found in a Barre, Vermont paper was succinct. “Not Poisoned.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that a humorous Townsman article has a sad story lurking behind it. A distraught woman, who may have had an ax to grind against her son-in-law, compelled her daughter’s grave to be dug up. We can't blame Annie for the first ill-considered disinterment. What was done was done.
The Townsman published a somber follow-up on January 29 that might be unpleasantly descriptive. Eva’s body was disinterred after Annie’s attorney came to town to clear up the legal mess that led to a literal mess. An autopsy was carried out in the “cemetery tomb” at Sacred Heart. Dr. Carl Eidam of Lawrence General Hospital was tasked with conducting a chemical analysis. I searched the Townsman through February of 1937. The results were not published in town.
I did some research on ancestry.com in the hopes that I would find an obituary of Eva or perhaps, a photo of her. Eva lived at 476 Andover Street in Lawrence with her parents, Wilfred, and two of their children named Roland and Beatrice. Wilfred worked as a chauffeur. They moved to Maine sometime before 1931.
It’s likely that Eva’s family was affiliated with Sacred Heart parish, leading to their internment in the parish’s cemetery here in Andover. Wilfred had remarried by 1937.
Eva shares a grave with her parents. Her father, Bruno, predeceased her in 1930. Annie lived on until 1943.
Sources Used:
1.) Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/166026397/eva-roy/photo (Accessed January 15, 2023)
2.) Andover Townsman January 22 1937 and January 29, 1937 (last visited January 16, 2023)
https://mhl.org/sites/default/files/newspapers/ATM-1937-01-22.pdf
https://mhl.org/sites/default/files/newspapers/ATM-1937-01-29.pdf
3.) The Portsmouth Herald January 19, 1937 (accessed via newspapers.com on January 15, 2023)
4.) Barre Daily Times February 2, 1937 (accessed via newspapers.com on January 15, 2023)
5.) The 1930 census (accessed via ancestry.com on January 18, 2023)
6.) Lawrence city directories for 1930 and 1931 (accessed via ancestry.com on January 18, 2023)