Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (45 page)

Was Ray just such a skilled man? He specialized in obstetrics and had taken a course at Castleton Medical College where training included the use of “instruments, apparatus, and appliances.” It’s hard to know whether Dr. Smith’s comment was a statement of fact or an insinuation.

But there was more at issue than an abortionist’s knife. In her deathbed testimony Mary Burns maintained that Ray had first given
her medication to induce an abortion and, only when that failed, resorted to mechanical means. Here’s where Peter Guignon’s and George Francis’s testimonies became relevant.

Taking the stand, Peter began by describing his work habits. As a pharmacist, he himself did not prescribe drugs, leaving that task to medical doctors; his job was simply to compound them. After filling prescriptions, he placed them in a “wire” but did not necessarily copy all of them into his book. Peter then moved on to the case at hand. He did not remember Mary Burns herself but recalled the circumstances. While standing in front of the pharmacy door smoking a cigar, a female patient had come up with a prescription in his brother-in-law’s handwriting, saying that “her month was up, she hadn’t any money.” Peter had called his clerk, George Francis, to fill the prescription and trusted her to pay later. He concluded by saying he had never known Ray to perform an abortion. Francis concurred with Peter on almost every point—that Ray had written the prescription and that he, Francis, had filled it—but then he added: “I have sometimes put up prescriptions containing ‘ergot’ for Dr. Ray.” Ergot, the newspaper columnist informed his readers, was “a medical substance which tends to produce abortions.”

The prescription was produced. Written out to Mary Burns, it was indeed in Ray’s handwriting and read as follows. “Tinct. Cinchona, comp. 1 oz.; Tinct. Gentian, comp. 1 oz.; Tinct. Cardamum, comp. 1dr; teaspoonful 3 times a day.” The doctors agreed that this was simply a tonic, “not harmful in nature.”
²⁵

Matters did not stop there, however. First, Dr. Schapps came forward to declare that he could detect no odor of gentian in the bottle, immediately raising the question of whether the compound it contained had been the same as the one prescribed. Given that there was not enough liquid in the bottle for a chemical analysis, it was impossible to know. The
Tribune
came right out and recklessly asserted that the content of the bottle was different from that of the prescription. Moreover, when the coroner seized Peter Guignon’s prescription book as evidence, it turned out that several pages had been torn out. Following the
Tribune
’s lead, the
Eagle
opined that these pages “probably contained the prescription that was really furnished.”
²⁶
And Francis’s testimony that
sometimes Ray compounded abortifacients undoubtedly hung heavily in the air. All these facts cast both Guignon and Ray in a shady light.

Coroner Murphy had already made up his mind. He wasn’t interested in going after Peter Guignon, who after all was a mere untrained pharmacist, but sought to throw the full weight of opinion and prejudice against Ray. Here’s how the newspapers reported the end of the inquest:

The coroner decided that the testimony of Dr. Ray was not admissible. Coroner Murphy said that he had no more evidence to be produced. Under the testimony, which they had heard, he thought the Jury would be justified in holding him to await the action of the Grand Jury. The deposition of the woman had been substantiated in two points. She had spoken of medicine, and the empty bottle was found in her room. She had spoken of her child, and its dead body was found in the vault. At the time of the deposition she was perfectly calm and reasonable.
²⁷

The jury deliberated for twenty minutes and came back with the following verdict: “That the said Mary Burns came to her death by hemorrhage caused by an abortion produced by Dr. P. G. Ray [
sic
].” When Ray was asked whether he had anything to say, he responded, “I am not guilty of the charges preferred against me. I do not know that I have ever seen the deceased.” Whereupon he was taken to jail, after which he posted bail in the amount of six thousand dollars.
²⁸

Now it’s our turn to ask questions. How did the jury reach such a verdict? There was no proof of a mechanical or drug-induced abortion or of what was in the empty bottle. Yet the jury must have taken this testimony as true fact. But much of it—abortion by mechanical means, a compounded prescription containing ergot—was mere insinuation. Nevertheless, there are unresolved questions. Had Peter written the prescription down in his book? If so, was it on one of the torn-out pages? Who had torn them out? Had someone tampered with the prescription bottle? Had the two Peters been framed?

The
Eagle
readily acknowledged that Ray was a “well qualified physician” with an “excellent reputation in his section of the city … ranking among the most skillful medical and surgical practitioners.”
²⁹
Yet the legal system chose to believe the word of a white servant girl, who admitted that she had never seen the abortion instrument, over that of a well-qualified and respected black doctor whose testimony was deemed inadmissible. Had he done so, Ray would probably have stated that Mary Burns was one of the many unmemorable young women for whom he had prescribed a tonic to ease the pain of miscarriage. Why, then, a guilty verdict in twenty minutes? Why were competent black doctors like Peter Ray and John DeGrasse so suspect?

Searching for more clues, I returned to the August 5 issue of the
Brooklyn Eagle.
What I found was yet another article on the tobacco factory riots printed on the front page in the far left-hand column. Titled “The Anti-Negro Riots,” it was indeed about that incident, but the second paragraph made a rather strange detour that explicitly linked Peter Williams Ray’s professional travails to larger social concerns.

Making due allowance for the condition of the two classes, there is but little difference in the quarrel between the colored factory laborers of South Brooklyn and the white laborers that they compete with, and that which took place between the doctors of the Kings County Medical Society, and a colored medical practitioner, a few days ago. The Society refused admission to the colored doctor because of his color. They do not want to associate with him. So far as they can they disqualify him from practice. Had the Kings County Medical Society been composed of uneducated laborers, they would have hustled Dr. Ray into the street for venturing to claim fellowship with him. With a clearer sense of the duty of every man to obey the law, they adopt a ridiculous subterfuge,
and disqualify the doctor. Their mode of action was different, and after all, scarcely entitled to more respect; but the feeling which actuated them is the same.

This would have been strong stuff from any newspaper, but it was particularly so coming from the
Eagle
, which was well known for its antiblack sentiments.

Indeed, the very next paragraph of the article went on to claim that “the never-varying edict of God” had set an insurmountable barrier between blacks and whites, and prophesied that “degradation” and “annihilation” would attend both races if any attempts were made to bridge it. Yet the
Eagle
opined that racism in the professional classes was no different, was just as insidious and ugly, as among the rabble. The only real distinction was the elite’s hypocrisy, their pretense of obeying the law and resorting to “ridiculous subterfuge” to cover it up.
³⁰
Although the violence involved in this subterfuge was not physical, it was no less hurtful to both Ray and Guignon (as it was to John DeGrasse). They were personal attacks on their honor, their integrity, their manhood. And they also constituted a policing of professional boundaries, a determined refusal to accept black men as professional equals out of fear that this might lead to other forms of social and intellectual equality.

Brooklyn’s medical doctors were not prepared to accept black physicians as equals any more than white workers were prepared to allow blacks access to decent jobs in the Watson and Lorillard tobacco factories. Earlier in the summer of 1862, Ray had applied for membership in the Kings County Medical Society. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the New York state legislature had become increasingly worried about the medical profession’s inability to regulate itself and get rid of “quacks, irregulars, and charlatans” practicing without a degree or a license. It passed legislation mandating the creation of county medical societies and compelling all practitioners to become members. In turn, the societies would license each applicant and grant a diploma.
³¹
Failure to join meant forfeiture of license. So Ray was only following the law when he applied to the Kings County Medical Society.

Ray’s candidacy, according to the
Brooklyn News
, proceeded
smoothly until it was discovered just before the vote that he was “only three-fourths white—the other fourth being the same as the ancient Adam is supposed by many to have been—black.” The reaction of the society’s members to the news was mixed, but the prevailing tone was definitely one of indignation. Opponents were stymied, however, in their efforts to translate emotion into action. They knew that the law compelled Ray to apply for membership and for the society to accept him. Even after considerable discussion, they still couldn’t figure out an elegant way to demand that he withdraw his candidacy. As hard as they tried, they were unable to uncover any irregularities in his application. Shifting from procedural to substantive grounds, one member suggested that Ray could be rejected because it was said that he sold quack medicines in his drugstore (might he have been thinking of my great-great-grandfather as well?). But some honest soul responded that the same could be said of many present. The final argument, if it could be called one, boiled down to this: that they could show “by science that this was a white man’s Society. … Admitting a colored man would be to a certain extent amalgamation, and amalgamation had a tendency to deteriorate—therefore a colored man could not be admitted.” The meeting concluded with the decision to appoint a committee of three to investigate Ray’s standing and “find some good reason for rejecting the applicant other than the color of his skin.”
³²

The men appointed were Drs. Smith, Norton, and Schapps, three of the four doctors who testified a few weeks later at the abortion inquest. Were they in on, or even responsible for, the ridiculous subterfuge? Without evidence, I can’t condemn them. Their testimony at the inquest was cautious and far from damning. Dr. Smith maintained that there was “no means whatever of knowing the causes” of Burns’s hemorrhaging to death. Dr. Schapps was the only witness who suggested that a surgical abortion had been performed, yet he speculated that Ray had only been trying to save Burns’s life. Were these three white doctors in secret sympathy with Ray? Embarrassed at the role they had been asked to play? Did they sense that, whatever they might say, prejudice alone was evidence enough to bind Ray over to a grand jury? That they could keep their hands clean and let Coroner Murphy do the society’s dirty work?

Once again, despite my best efforts the paper trail in both newspapers and court records went cold, leaving me unable to piece together the end of the story. But this much is clear. White elites and professionals were as loath to accept black men as equals as was the rabble. Ray did not go to jail: I found records of his attendance at Stone Square Lodge no. 6 meetings in September and throughout the fall of 1862. That meant that his status as a Grand Master—a mason singled out as a model for his brethren and given the task of instructing them in the Craft—had not been in jeopardy. His fellow masons evidently stood in solidarity with him. Nevertheless, the episode must have been utterly humiliating to both Ray and Guignon.

At the National Library of Medicine, I went through all the issues of the
Proceedings of the Kings County Medical Society
that I could find. Although Ray went on to have a thriving career as a doctor and pharmacist and became a member of the New York state medical association (which probably licensed him), he was never admitted to the Kings County Medical Society.

My great-great-grandfather’s travails were not yet over. The years following the abortion inquest brought even greater heartache.

As a youngster, Peter had received the best education available to New York’s black children at the Mulberry Street School, and he was determined to give his son the same opportunity. That meant sending Peter Jr., now a lad of sixteen, to Oberlin College. But on July 26, 1865, young Peter died. My first inkling of his premature death came from Crummell’s obituary of his old friend. Describing the son as “much like his father, full of manly beauty, spirit and promise,” Crummell refused to elaborate on Peter Jr.’s death beyond noting that, “sent to Oberlin College, he lost his life, suddenly, by a most painful accident.” Maritcha’s memoir was equally cryptic. Explaining her decision not to attend Oberlin, she simply wrote: “A relation of mine had met with an accidental death there.”
³³

I went through the New York newspapers to see whether I could
track down any more information and finally found two obituaries, a brief notice in the
New York Tribune
, and a longer one in the
Weekly Anglo-African
that offered little more in the way of information:

GUIGNON—In Oberlin, Ohio, on Wednesday, July 26, Peter Guignon, jr., grandson of Peter Ray and only son of Peter and Cornelia Guignon, aged 16 years, 3 months and 1 day.

The relatives and friends of the family are most respectfully invited to attend his funeral on Sunday, at 3 o’clock p.m., from the residence of his parents, No. 282 South-fourth-st, Williamsburgh, Long Island.