Accident - 1910

Late in the afternoon, Thursday, June 30, 1910, Dorothy Hobson, aged 16, and her friend Susan Perkins, were returning home by automobile from a charitable visit to the Mountain Sanatorium.

          The chauffeur, Keith McRae, was guiding the Russell touring car down a steep incline at about 12 m.p.h. when the machine began to sway back and forth across the dusty road. Suddenly, it crashed through a low plank fence and hurtled over the 40 foot embankment.

          Residents in the vicinity of the area where the John Street mountain access met Strongman’s Road were startled by the rumbling noise of the automobile as it rolled down the embankment, ending its terrible journey with a sickening thud.

          The next sounds to be heard were the moans and scream of Dorothy Hobson, who was trapped in the overturned vehicle.

          George Clarkson, who lived nearby, rushed to the scene to find Susan Perkins on the floor of the car, between the back and front seats. Miss Perkins was dead.

          The chauffeur was wandering about the road in a bewildered state, completely unaware of where he was and what had happened. Dorothy was found on the floor of the vehicle, pleading piteously : “Take me out! Oh, please rescue me!”

          When Dorothy Hobson was removed from the car, the pain of her injuries became so intense that she began to beat her hands on the ground in an attempt to give vent to the overpoweringly agonizing pain she was feeling.

          Mr. Clarkson was about to try to carry Dorothy to St. Joseph’s Hospital at the base of the John street road when the automobile of George Lynch-Staunton happened along. After gently being placed in that car, Miss Hobson was rushed to the hospital, arriving in a very few minutes.

          The evening after the accident, the toll of injuries was added up.

          Chauffeur McRae had suffered a major scalp wound, a badly cut ear and some internal injuries. Susan Perkins had died from a broken neck and spine, her skull was fractured, nearly all her ribs were broken and her face was badly cut. Mercifully, her death was instanteous.

          Dorothy Hobson was in very bad shape. As well as numerous cuts about her body, her back was severely injured and she suffered from numerous undisclosed internal injuries.

          Late in the evening when she occasionally recovered consciousness, she would selflessly turn to her mother who was at her side and say, “Be brave, mother.”

          Dorothy’s father, Robert Hobson, manager of the Hamilton Steel and Iron Company, was in Montreal on business at the time of the accident, but hurried home on the first available train after he read the telegram informing him of the accident.

          The cause of the accident was never fully determined as Chauffeur McRae completely lost all recollection of the incident. The police investigation concluded that either the steering gear of the machine went out of order, or, that the wind had blown dust into McRae’ eyes causing him to lose control of the automobile.

          Chauffeur McRae recovered fairly rapidly, but Dorothy Hobson’s sufferings carried on for two months. Even though in intense pain, she would always appear cheerful when her parents or relatives were near, often collapsing under the strain after they left her room.

          After each visit, the effort to remain hopeful became more and more difficult until it was physically impossible for her to continue to hide the frightful agony she was suffering.

          Mercifully she lapsed into an unconscious state at 6 o’clock, Saturday evening, September 3, 1910, and died seven hours later at 1 a.m.

          All three Hamilton daily newspapers lauded Dorothy’s courage in editorials which appeared after her passing.

          The Hamilton Times noted that “she bore her weeks of suffering with much patient heroism and left, with those having her care, the memory of sweetness and gentility that will not fade.”

          The Hamilton Herald editorial praised Miss Hobson’s “splendid heroism and saint-like patience” and noted that she was “a carefree girl, lively, active, spirited” but not particularly known for her “magnanimity or capacity for self-abnegation.” However, after the accident the “latent beauty and nobility of the sufferer’s character were developed and revealed.”

         

Cocaine - 1912

On November 18, 1912 August 1, 1912, a plain clothes officer with the Hamilton Police Department told a reporter with the Hamilton Herald the news that a locally-prominent citizen had approached Police Chief Smith with the information that Hamilton had become a centre for the use and distribution of cocaine, and that “the habit was not only prevalent among degenerates,” but also among many in the city’s upper classes.

        The physician, whose identity the plain clothes police officer refused to reveal, told the story of “a well-connected young woman who was the victim of the habit.”

        For the past several weeks, the physician had noticed a change in the young lady’s demeanor. She would be alternately high strung and giddy, or morose and depressed.

        Concluding that the twenty-one year old woman was taking drugs, the physician informed her mother about his suspicions.

        A search was made of the young lady’s bedroom while she had gone out one afternoon. In a pocket of a disused skirt found in her clothes closet, a small bottle containing a little more than an ounce of cocaine was discovered.

        It was decided to let her finish that portion of her supply, but to secretly follow her when she went to get more.

        In three days, her clothes closet was again checked and the bottle was found to be nearly empty.

That night, after she told her parents that she was going to the theatre with a girl friend, she was followed to a house on MacNab street north, where she was admitted at once.

        Her father who was among those who followed the young lady, went up to the door of the MacNab street house, and knocked.

        A black woman answered the door, and seeing a man who she did not recognize, refused him admission, tried to block him from entering the house.

        Simply pushing her aside, the father stomped through the doorway.

As told to the Herald reporter, inside the front entrance was “a large room fitted up lavishly” where the daughter was discovered “lying in a stupor upon a divan.”

        The reporter was also told that “in the same room were three or four white women, two negroes and a businessman of this city.”

        One of the “negroes” was a rather large man unfamiliar with the man who burst into the room. After asking the father if he was there for a reading, a stormy scene broke out, and the penitent daughter was dragged away.

        The next day, the young lady was sent to a retreat in the hope that a prolonged abstinence from the drug would cure her habit.

        The large man who offered to tell the fortune of the cocaine victim’s father was from New York City, where it was alleged that he had jumped bail on a drug charge.

The Herald reporter discovered that the man was “a crystal gazer, but it is said he is only a trickster who feeds his designs as a cocaine peddler in this way.”

        The police officer concluded his tip to the Herald reporter with the observation that “many women of some prominence frequented this house on MacNab street: “if you knew some of the women that had been going there, you would be astonished. For the most part, they are fashionable.”

        The Hamilton police were determined to break up the MacNab street “joint” and the plain clothes officer promised, “arrests were expected to follow.”