WHITE SHROUD
That Covered Body of Her Baby made From Mother’s Wedding Garment.
Until yesterday Annie Vorwald bore her poverty uncomplainingly. When her husband was ill and unable to work she made the living. Then they were both taken down, and there was slender fare at the poor home on Liston avenue. The worst blow came, however, when their two-year-old baby John was stricken with measles and otitis media and the mother was obliged to take it to the City Hospital.
Yesterday the child died and added to her grief was the harrowing thought that having no money that tender little body would have to be laid away in potter’s field. She knew not where to turn. Those of her friends to whom she could apply were almost as poor as herself. In her heart-breaking dilemma, she came to the hospital. Her tears won sympathy, and she was promised a coffin, and the use of the ambulance as a hearse. The authorities also told her that they would furnish the linen for a shroud, but this Mrs. Vorwald refused.
Among her meager possessions was a white skirt she had worn on her wedding day. None saw her at the task of converting this garment at her lonely home into the shroud for her darling dead. None saw the tears that fell on the trembling hands that made the stitches, but after two hours she returned, and in the dead room of the hospital she clothed the dead body in the shroud she had made. That done, she fainted away. When she was brought to the ambulance was ready.
The dead body, in a rude little casket, was placed in the vehicle. The husband and wife took a seat beside the driver. The journey was made to the German Protestant Cemetery on Price Hill, where the tiny grave had been given them, and without a prayer, but with many sobs and tears from the agonized mother, the little body was consigned to earth.
Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 29 February 1904: p. 10
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead and on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.
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