Baby found in Swapped Luggage
One hundred years ago today in The Daily News: A woman secretly traded bags with a stranger at GrandCentral Station, abandoning her baby, “same as did the gentleman who caused me all this trouble,” according to a note inside the valise.
The article is worth reading in full:
The Daily News Jan. 20, 1920, p. 3.
Some items of note: According to the note, the baby had fallen on its head two weeks earlier and possibly suffered an injury, the woman had thoughtfully included two bottles of milk and a can of talcum powder in the bag, the baby was born a Catholic, and the woman was returning to her California home.
Grand Central Station, in a 1920 postcard from the Keystone View Company. Library of Congress.
Of course, all the News seems to have used for a source is the word of Robert F. Rohlad of Bridgeport, Ct. (In the New York Herald, the name appears as the more like “Robert F. Rohland.”) Is it possible the whole-baby-swapping-in train-station story was made up to cover for someone, perhaps inspired by Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest? (It could not have been inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, also featuring a baby in a swapped valise, as that was at the moment still in production.