BOY OR GIRL

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 January 1928, Page 4

BOY OR GIRL

HOSPITAL TANGLE. A problem fit for the judgment of a Solomon describes accurately S’ B strange a puzzle as has ever been given to a judge to unravel, and wirich came before the Court at Cleveland. It concerned the parentage of a baby born in a maternity ward of a hospital and a mother who nine days aftei’ she was told she had given birth to a baby boy discovered she was nursing instead a baby girl. She became convinced that there had been accidental substitution. The hospital authorities, however, said there had not, and scientific experts from near and far joined in- attempting, to unravel the problem. Eventually Judge Weygaudt, before whom the case came, gave a legal decision .that the baby girl was the real child of the doubting woman. Both she and her husband, however, are still veryy sceptical that they now have the right baby. The mother, to whom has come this extraordinary experience is a Mrs Smith, wife of Sam Smith, a resident of Cleveland, and already the proud mother of four bonny children. Both she and her husband heartily desired a boy as the latest addition to their family, and when, after the event, she was told by the nurse that her hopes had come true, and that she was the mother of a bonny little son, she was overjoyed. So was Mr Sam Smith when he. heard the news.

They were dumbfounded at the, to them, incredible news nine days later that the baby was a girl after all. The hospital authorities explained that the mistake was due to a “clerical error,” the girl having been wrongly booked by the nurse as a boy. The Smiths, however, refused to accept this explanation. There were two other Mrs Smiths in the same ward, and both had given birth to babies the same day as Mrs Sam Smith. Moreover, both these Mrs Smiths had baby boys.

Mrs Sam Smith and her husband therefore bluntly declared their belief that the babies had all been mixed up, and that one of the other Mrs Sm’ths had their child and that he was a boy, as they had first been told. Both the other Mrs Smiths, however, asserted with equal emphasis that the babies they were nursing were the cor; rect ones, and backed up the hospital authorities in the assertion that there had been no error other than the initial one of wrongly booking Mrs Sam Smith's offspring as a boy. \ The authorities, therefore, were faced with as pretty a tangle as could be devised, with the mothers nursing the two boy babies stoutly refusing to give either of them up; Mrs Sam Smith as resolutely refusing to accept the baby girl as hers, and further refusing through her tears, to leave the hospital without, as she claimed, her real child!

Her husband, Sam Smith, promptly went to law about it. He brought a habeas corpus action demanding of the hospital authorities that they produce the “body” of the child, “George Smith.” And meanwhile learned doctors and scientists ipored over the problem of how the actual parentage of the baby allotted to Mrs Sam Smith could be determined beyond all cavil. Some there were who asserted that a blood test would give the desired result; others that finger prints would reveal the truth; yet others that comparisons of the facial and physical characteristics of mother and child, as well as expert examination by anthropologists of the bones of each, would support or demolish Mrs Sam Smith’s claim. And shoals of letters poured in from all parts of the country offering suggestions as to how to determine accurately the baby’s parentage.

One woman, for instance, wrote declaring her ability to solve the problem by a single glance at tile palms of mother and baby; while a scientist gave details of apparatus he had invented which, he said, would determine the parentage instantly by measuring the vibrations of the blood corpuscles in the two.

There were many other suggestions, but not one of them was regarded as practicable. Nor were the blood test or finger-print suggestions eventually. When the case came before Judge Weygrandt for final settlement it was the evidence of those who had attended Mrs Sam Smith and the evidence of doctors as to facial and other characteristics that decided the matter.

The Chief Witness Judge Weygrandt had to decide against Mr and Mrs Sam Smith. The chief witness was the nurse who had ushered the baby into the world. She declared that she was positive that the baby girl was Mrs Sam Smith’s correct baby. She frankly told how she had at first the impression that the baby was a boy, how the doctor who examined it after birth did not take it out of the basket, how as a result of her impression as to its sex it was labelled “No. 70. Male,” these labels being affixed to its back, tied to its wrists, and also to the basket, and how the baby was then placed on a shelf together with, four other babies born the- same day. She said that the hospital records were badly muddled, and that the Smith Baby Tangle arose purely as the result of a clerical error. This evidence was followed by that of a medical expert, who declared that the baby possessed physical characteristics of a dominant character possessed also by other members of the Sam Smith family. And other nurses confirmed the evidence already given that a clerical error had been made.

Judge Weygrandt therefore dismissed the action brought by the Sam Smiths, thereby deciding that the mother had her right baby. She grew hysterical as she heard the decision, and barely heard the voice of the judge as he told her that the only thing she could do was to accept the baby girl as really her own. Mrs Sam Smith and her husband, were, however, both in tears and heartbroken. “I’ll accept the baby girl as my child,” the sobing mother told the sympathetic friends who surged round her, “but the dojibt will never be banished from my mind. I'll never be thoroughly' satisfied she is my child.” Her husband voiced the same thing. “That doubt,” he said, “will always be in my mind, too. But,” he concluded, as he placed an arm round his tearful wife, “we’ll take her and bring her up like our other four children.” And so the Smith Baby Tangle has been solved.