Amanuensis Monday - Irene Walsh Webster, 1910

As family historians know, every once in a while you run across a really interesting "skeleton" in the family tree. This is an article published in the New York times, January 1910, regarding the death of my son's great great grandmother, Irene Francis Walsh Webster.

INVESTIGATE WOMAN'S DEATH

Man Held as a Witness Discharged After an Autopsy.

A man who said later that he was Charles Phillips, a button manufacturer, of 110 Pennington Avenue, Newark, went to the Mirror Hotel, at 518 Willis Avenue, the Bronx, on Friday night. Yesterday morning at 9 o'clock the woman, who was Mrs. Irene Webster of 302 East 140th Street, complained that she felt ill, and Phillips called Dr. A. L. Smolen of 443 East 146th Street.

Dr. Smolen summoned an ambulance from Lebanon Hospital, but the woman had died before it arrived. Phillips was placed under arrest by the police of the Alexander Avenue Station, and the Coroner's office notified. Coroner Shongut and Dr. Curlin, his physician, held an autopsy, and found that Mrs. Webster had died of heart disease. Phillips was discharged.

William Webster of 105 Alexander Avenue, and Thomas and James Walsh, the woman's brothers, were summoned to the hotel by the police. Webster said he had separated from his wife two years ago, and had been paying her $3.50 a week. The landlady from whom Mrs. Webster rented a furnished room at 302 East 140th Street, said that her roomer had suffered from heart trouble.