The Selwyn Avenue Deaths

     Eighty-nine years ago this week, three children who would have been my Uncles and Aunt, died under somewhat mysterious circumstances.
     It was August, 1921, and they were part of a big Irish family of eight living in crowded conditions on Selwyn Avenue in The Bronx, New York City.

     Their father, my grandfather Andrew, was a policeman assigned to police headquarters. By trade he was a carpenter, but as was the practice in those days, he wore a uniform, and carried a badge and a gun in addition to a tool box. His wife Sarah had her hands full taking care of the kids.
     Five year old James was the first to get sick, and the first to die. A sore throat that got progressively worse, according to the reports.
     Ten year old Kathleen got sick the day of James funeral, and died within 24 hours.
     The last to fall ill was nine year old Andrew, Jr., who got sick as Kathleen's funeral was being planned, and died quickly as well.
     My Father was a survivor of that tragedy, just a months old infant at the time, no memory of the events, and, physically at least, unaffected by whatever it was that killed the children.

     I've tried to put myself in their lives and imagine how horrifying it must have been for Sarah and Andrew to watch the three siblings get sick and die over two weeks that Summer almost nine decades ago...expecting, I guess, for the other children to die as well of the strange malady that had savaged its way through the family.
     Was it safe for Sarah to serve anything to the remaining children? Did she empty the apartment of food as a precaution? Did she blame herself? Was there police suspicion of a crime? Did the neighbors gossip?
    We've found no police report, though there must have been one, and other than the newspaper reference to a police investigation, no indication of any wrongdoing.
    The New York Evening Telegram of August 13, 1921 reported:

Dr. Reigelmann, Medical Examiner of The Bronx, who reported the three deaths, said physicians at the hospital had found traces of mushroom poisoning, but he had learned, he said, that the children had not eaten mushrooms before they became ill. The Medical Examiner seemed to think that the children, who were accustomed to play in the woods near their home, might have been poisoned by eating wild berries of some kind.

     As a child, I remember visiting St.Raymond's cemetery in The Bronx, where the children are buried. My father told me they had died of something they had taken from the medicine cabinet, the same story my sister remembers.
         Another newspaper clipping also suggests it was something the children had eaten:

Neighborhood children admitted that the Lennox children had eaten several plates of ice cream, and had partaken of a considerable quantity of "penny candy" during the day.

      The death of three children from the same family was fairly big news, and the papers reported that a "thorough" police investigation was underway. Autopsies were conducted on the three...the results somewhat inconclusive. "Internal poisoning" is listed as the cause by the newspapers, though there's certainly no blame assigned.
     Also on August 13, 1921, The New York Times reported on the mystery under the headline

Doctors Unable to Determine Origin of Malady Which Killed Three Children:

An autopsy of the bodies of the two older children failed to reveal the origin of the trouble. One theory advanced was that the children had eaten poisoned berries of some sort which they had found in lots near their home. Other children in the neighborhood where the Lennox family live have been sick with similar symptoms. Dr. Riegelman (The Bronx County Medical Examiner), who has made an exhaustive study of the case, said he had called in Dr. A.O. Gettler of the Medical Examiner's office to make an analysis of the digestive organs of the dead Lennox children. The Lennoxes have three other children.

     There was one additional child born later to Sarah and Andrew, my Aunt Eileen, who died early in 2009.
     In 1923, Andrew himself was killed. He fell from a police vehicle when it ran off the road in upstate New York. He died instantly, leaving poor Sarah to grieve yet again, and to raise the four surviving children by herself, including my Dad, who went on to become a police officer too.
     My Grandmother Sarah died when I was six, and my only memory of her is sitting in her lap in her Bronx apartment as she sang hymns in Gaelic.
     While there are numerous substances children could ingest in the 1920's that would cause death, both iodine and Mercurochrome would have been common in medicine cabinets at the time, and it may be one of them that ended the three young lives. Yet the autopsy on the kidneys of one of the children detected no metals.
     The photo above shows Andrew and Sarah with a child. A note written on the photo suggests it is little Kathleen, who died with her brothers, but there's a question mark written after her name. Another in a very long line of questions about the deaths on Selwyn Avenue 89 years ago.