WHICH BABY?

Thames Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 19826, 1 October 1936, Page 4

WHICH BABY?

STRANGE U.S. TANGLE DRAMATIC SEQUEL OCCURS GiRL CHOOSES HER MOTHER The drama and heartbreak of a tragic "baby mixup" which affected the lives of two families seventeen years ago was renewed when an attractive young woman —who was the baby in this strange tangle—announced that she had become convinced the courts had awarded her to the wrong family. While the city wondered at the unusual turn of affairs, the families of John Garner and Daniel Pittman conferred over the future of the young woman, known for seventeen years as Louise Madeline Pittman, but who has now decided that she is Mary Elizabeth Garner. In 1919, at a hospital in Atlanta, two babies—one of whom was named Louise Madeline Pittman, and the other Mary Elizabeth Garner—were born a day apart, and a few days later Mrs. Pittman announced that she had been given the wrong baby, protecting that the child she had been given was in reality the daughter of Mrs. Garner. The babies were exchanged in spite of the protests of the Garners, who were convinced that the baby originally given them was really their own. Steve Johnson, who was then superintendent of the hospital, was a sort of "umpire" in settling the tangle, deciding

that Louise Madeline should remain with the Pittmans and Mary Elizabeth with the Garners. Only a few months later the girl known as Mary Elizabeth Garner died of pneumonia. The same day Louise Madeline was severely burned. Mary was buried as Mary Elizabeth Garner. The Garners took court proceedings to gain custody of Louise Madeline, but records show that the habeas corpus proceedings were dropped. The families assert that the late Judge George L. Bell ruled that the girl would be permitted to make her own choice when she reached the age of accountability. Years passed, and the Pittmans moved to Florida. There a neighbour told Louise of her uncertain parentage. "Since that time," Louise now said, "I have felt that. I was not a Pittman." At the beginning of August she went to Macon to visit the Garners, and later made the startling announcement that she had become convinced that she had been awarded to the wrong family. "It is a queer feeling," she asserted, "to have to decide which family you belong to, but I have known all along since I have been with them this was my family. I wanted to wait a few days to decide definitely." Then, putting her arm around Mrs. Gamer, she said: "I know this is my mother. I cannot tell you how I know it. but I do know it." "My child is back," Mrs. Garner ecstatically cried. "I have all my girls with me now." The Garners and the Pittmans then talked it over, and decided to allow the girl to choose for herself, but she later stated that she would occasionally visit the Pittman family, as she owed it to herself not to forsake the family in which she was so closely connected through the years.