Michael has recently posted that he found an FBI document indicating that the Lindbergh nurse, Miss Cummings, was fired because the baby’s health declined. Michael, I congratulate you on this find, and I wish to acknowledge the hard work on your part that must have been required to discover it. Of course, not having seen the document, I cannot remark, one way or the other, on the document’s own merits.
At the beginning of this thread, I commented on why I believed the baby, aside from a moderate case of rickets, appeared to be a normal, healthy, developing child. I would now like to expand on why I still believe that to be the case.
As followers of this thread know, there have been some heated exchanges between me and Michael. It is the wish of both of us that these exchanges cease. At the same time, I know we would both like to feel free to post material relevant to the thread, and I assume I not forbidden from posting.
Therefore, in the following remarks, I am going to avoid any mention of Michael. I will neither quote nor paraphrase him. I will also refrain from any use of humor. And I will only use material that cite sources that can easily be checked. Now it is inevitable that, in the course of discussion, I will occasionally touch on ideas that reflect positions that Michael holds, but they also reflect the positions of many other people. Therefore, Michael, let me make it clear that I am not writing this as any kind of attack on you. Furthermore, you will be free, as always, to rebut anything I say. Furthermore, I make a pledge up front. If you make a rebuttal to this particular post, I pledge NOT to counter-rebut it—even if something is screaming at me “rebut that!” I do not want this to turn into another back-and-forth situation. Of course, if some other board members have a comment or question, I will respond to them.
When I started this thread, I used Anne Lindbergh’s
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead to help me get a picture of Charlie’s health and development. I want to state, in complete honesty, that I did not use this book because I thought it was going to be pro-Charles Lindbergh and support a biased and positive outlook on the baby. I originally bought HGHL because I thought having Anne’s perspective could help me understand the LKC better. I have never read the entire book, and when I opened it looking for the passages about the baby’s health, I had no idea what I would find. As it turns out, the book shows (to me, as an RN) a normal baby’s development, both physically and mentally.
Now first, I think all parties can at least agree on this: If something was wrong with the baby, Anne would have known about it. Not only was she the mother, but she was no ditz. She was an accomplished pilot and author.
It has been charged that HGHL gives us a distorted view of the reality. Now let us examine the proposition that the baby was defective or very sick, and that Anne concealed that in HGHL. I guess the first question to ask is: Why would Anne do that? And I think there are two possible answers: (1) Anne was trying to conceal a eugenics-motivated kidnapping, either because she was a party to it, or because she suspected in her heart that CAL had done it; or (2) Anne was trying to portray the baby as healthy out of some sort of personal pride, or from Lindbergh-Morrow family pride.
Let’s take the first explanation: Anne was trying to conceal a eugenics-motivated kidnapping, either because she was a party to it, or because she suspected in her heart that CAL had done it.
While no one is off the table, I think it is reasonable to say that there is pretty wide agreement that Anne Lindbergh was probably not a party to a conspiracy to get rid of her son. According to Major Lanphier’s 3-10-32 statement (Falzini timeline), when the baby was found missing, “Anne is annoyed, goes to the top of the stairs and calls to Colonel Lindbergh, asking why he had taken the baby.”
njspmuseum.blogspot.com/2008/02/march-1-1932-timeline.htmlWe also know that Anne told police that she heard the sound of a car on gravel a few minutes before Lindbergh came through the front door. I have always felt this has been an observation that could lend itself to incriminating Lindbergh (and others like A & M agree). If Anne was truly conspiring with Charles in the kidnapping, I am surprised Charles would allow her to say it.
But regardless of whether Anne was party to the kidnapping, or merely suspected Charles, I think there is an important point to be made. HGHL was published in 1973, 41 years after the kidnapping. In 1973, the LKC was not a “hot item” like it is today. I believe it is fairly correct to say that it was Scaduto’s
Scapegoat (1976) that generally sparked renewed interest in the case. Furthermore, it was not until Ahlgren and Monier (1993) that Lindbergh became widely discussed as a suspect. Therefore I cannot believe that HGHL was written to discredit charges that Lindbergh kidnapped his own baby. Such charges were not making news in 1973, therefore Anne had no motive to disprove them.
Now let us take the second thesis: that in HGHL, Anne was trying to portray the baby as healthy out of some sort of personal pride, or from Lindbergh-Morrow family pride.
Again, the 1973 publication date becomes important. This is 41 years after Charlie died; Anne was 67 years old. She had five other children by Charles—all healthy. Why would she feel a prideful compulsion now to lie about the baby’s health? Anne seems pretty frank in discussing both her joys and sorrows. If the baby was truly sick or defective, it seems to me perhaps a better title would have been
Hour of Lead, Hour of Lead.I suppose it might be argued that Lindbergh was seething down Anne’s back when she compiled HGHL. But since he died from cancer the following year (1974), I rather doubt it.
Now if Anne truly falsified the picture of Charlie’s health in HGHL, how could she have done that? I can think of three ways:
(1) She went back and altered her original letters and diaries. In other words, where it said “the baby is sick,” she changed it to say “the baby is well.”
(2) She omitted things. In HGHL, she kept the “baby is well” material, but omitted the “baby is sick” material.
(3) The original material ITSELF was funky. In other words, those letters and diary entries from 1930-32 were full of falsehoods about the baby’s condition.
Now let’s examine each of these possibilities on their own merits.
(1) She went back and altered her original letters and diaries.
This seems very unlikely. Anne’s original writings are available to scholars in collections. For example, Smith College has 162 boxes of her materials:
asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss504_main.htmlIf in HGHL, Anne altered what she originally wrote, this would become quickly apparent to researchers. She would be exposed as a fraud. I think we can pretty well rule this one out.
Now let’s take: (2) She omitted things. In HGHL, she kept the “baby is well” material and omitted the “baby is sick” material.
This is one of the more popular accusations—that we are getting a highly edited version of events.
Now it is certainly possible that Anne eliminated material from HGHL because that material contained sinister secrets. However, speaking as a professional writer, I want to point out that there are mundane reasons why material gets left out of a book. Editors are sticklers for conciseness. The last thing they want is a boring book.
Let’s say that Anne wrote two letters on a certain date, one to Elisabeth and one to Constance, but only the letter to Elisabeth gets published. One might conclude that “the letter to Constance must have contained an embarrassing secret.” Yes, that’s possible. But it’s also possible that the two letters contained approximately the same material, so the second was edited out because it was redundant.
If Anne published every single letter from that period, the book might become a heavy tome (like Wayne Jones’s
Murder of Justice), and it would bore the heck out of people. That means very few sales, and publishers don’t want that.
But there’s another important reason why certain letters do not appear in HGHL. The collection was published 40 years after the fact. Presumably many letters had disappeared. How many of us (older folks) today could cough up many letters we wrote 40 years ago? As a matter of fact, I have an old college buddy who still trots out a letter I sent him around 1970. He kept it because he thought it was funny and he liked it. But I’d sure be hard-pressed to present a collection of my letters from that era. Now obviously, I am not Anne Morrow Lindbergh, but you get my point.
Anne herself provides another reason for gaps in the material:
So when we see a gap in HGHL, yes, it is certainly POSSIBLE that Anne omitted material for sinister motives. But it is also possible that the gaps exist for the ordinary reason quoted above.
I’d also like to point out other problems with saying that Anne removed all material about the baby’s being sick and only included the material about his being well.
First of all, Anne DOES discusses issues with the baby—his initial poor weight gain, a sudden trip to the pediatrician—it doesn’t seem to me she was fixated on portraying a “perfect baby.”
Second there is an issue of logic here. At the very top of this thread, I noted, after quoting from HGHL:
I did the same with his mental development.
Now let’s take the hypothesis that Charlie is seriously ill, or suffering from a major birth defect. And let’s combine that with the theory that in HGHL Anne only included the “healthy” observations and omitted the “sick” observations. This would mean Charlie was having very herky-jerky progress. He’s sick then well, sick then well, sick then well, etc., but we just see the “wells.” A serious birth disorder, however, does not usually lend itself to this sort of back-and-forth pattern.
Finally, let’s go to the third reason:
(3) The original material ITSELF was funky. In other words, those letters and diary entries from 1930-32 were full of falsehoods about the baby’s condition.
I have serious problems with this one. Those letters were written to close relatives like her mother and sisters. They were a sort of 1930’s version of email or texting. Now why would Anne lie to her mother and sisters about the baby’s health? The mother and sisters SAW the baby on a regular basis. Therefore they would have KNOWN that Anne was describing something totally at odds with reality.
It cannot be charged that these letters were written for public consumption, to protect the family name. These were private letters. There were not published until over 40 years later.
In short, based on all of the foregoing, I believe that the probabilities favor HGHL giving us an accurate picture of Charlie.
Now let us see if HGHL is consistent with other material (at least that I have available) about the baby.
We know from the letter of Dr. Van Ingen (Charlie’s pediatrician) to Mrs. Morrow
www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/vaningen.pdfthat Dr. Van Ingen had last seen him on February 18th, 1932—this was only 12 days before the kidnapping. Surely if anyone would have known that Charlie had a serious disease or birth defect, it would have been Van Ingen. Yet he describes the baby as normal. His height was 33 inches and his weight 26 pounds. According to standardized charts of child growth
www.buzzle.com/articles/height-and-weight-chart-for-children.htmlat 20 months, an average male child would weigh 25.35 pounds, slightly less than Charlie. He was tall for his age, as boys usually are only 31 inches tall at age two. It sounds like he is taking after his tall father in this respect. I doubt that Van Ingen pulled these numbers out of thin air.
Van Ingen certainly hedged on mentioning the rickets. He did mention the unclosed fontanelle, which is consistent with rickets. He may have been observing a degree of client confidentiality. However, Mrs. Morrow was the grandmother and I believe she had met Van Ingen. Although one might argue that Lindbergh had bullied Van Ingen into lying, I want to point out that Mrs. Morrow was a powerful figure in her own right, and telling whopping lies to Mrs. Morrow could have meant unpleasant consequences.
If Van Ingen examined the baby just 12 days before the kidnapping—and Charlie was seriously ill with a worsening disorder—I would expect Van Ingen to have responded accordingly. Perhaps, for example, he would have had Charlie admitted to the hospital. But instead, we see Charlie is not even attended by medical nurses at home (AT THIS TIME), and that Anne is trying to learn to care for Charlie by herself on weekends, with no help from Betty Gow.
Now to play devil’s advocate with myself, one could take this position: “Well, Van Ingen saw that Charlie was hopeless—so hopeless that not even hospitalization would do any good. So hopeless that no nurse at home could help.” In other words, Charlie was a “hospice” case—destined to live out his few remaining days at home before death took him.
But there are MANY things against this. How could Van Ingen tell Anne the baby was a hospice case, yet tell Anne’s mother the baby was totally fine? Mom’s info and Grandma’s info are bound to cross. Even in hospice cases, by the way, individuals are usually attended by nurses (to administer morphine, for example). And if the kid’s about to die, why does Lindbergh need abductors to get rid of him? Let him die an ordinary death; If Lindbergh was worried about his public image as a eugenicist, they could have arranged some non-genetic cover story for the press (e.g., death from an accident), which would not have tarnished his image.
If Van Ingen was lying to Mrs. Morrow, he apparently was also lying in his pretrial deposition. I have not seen the deposition, but Gardner has, and he reports nothing more significant than a “moderate rickety condition.”
Most pediatricians seek to save life—not destroy it—so I don’t think Van Ingen fits well into some sort of eugenics scheme by Lindbergh. I would have to wonder just when Lindbergh met with Van Ingen to embroil him in the conspiracy. Notice that at the mortuary, Van Ingen’s reaction was quite different from Lindbergh and Gow. The latter quickly identified the corpse as Charlie’s, but Van Ingen, horrified, refused to do so. This shows Van Ingen was not acting in lock-step with Lindbergh and Gow. I suppose one could argue that Lindbergh just didn’t have time to call Van Ingen and cue him as to what his reaction should be.
Next, I am going to take quotes from Mark Falzini’s timeline of events on the day of the kidnapping:
njspmuseum.blogspot.com/2008/02/march-1-1932-timeline.htmlNotice that, according to these three women, the baby is talking and running around—despite his cold. There is nothing indicating a seriously ill child. Also, note the dates on the statements—March 1932. This is not something Wilentz cooked up.
Now to play my own Devil’s Advocate again, one could say: “Well, Lindbergh bullied Anne, Betty and Elsie and forced them to tell the police that child looked and acted well.” OK, but now Lindbergh’s eugenics conspiracy is getting pretty big—it includes the kidnappers, his wife, his servants, and the pediatrician. He’s counting on them to not slip up when interviewed by the police. And he’s counting on them to stay mum for life. And apparently they all did. Betty Gow was interviewed at age 88 in Scotland and revealed nothing—even though Charles Lindbergh had been dead for over 20 years.
By the way, if everyone in the household was “in on it”—Charles, Anne, Betty and the Whateleys—I almost wonder why CAL needed to hire a gang of abductors. They themselves could have just driven Charlie over to Skillman (or wherever) and dumped him off. Well, I suppose they still had to fool the police.
Next I want to quote Red Johnsen, who was quoted in a series of articles for the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in April 1932. Here he is describing a visit to Highfields in January 1932. I am going to excerpt his description of Cal Jr.
news.google.com/newspapers?id=x5MoAAAAIBAJ&sjid=e2kDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1709,2360110&dq=pittsburgh+gazette+1932&hl=en
Now I am the first to admit that Red Johnsen probably had help writing these articles. The English is perhaps too good for a foreigner, and I am going to guess that a news reporter may have done the writing, after interviewing Johnsen. But this doesn’t mean the content is a fabrication. Note that after the dog leaves, he describes the child as saying “Dog all gone.” This is consistent with what Anne wrote in HGHL—when Lindbergh left the room, Charlie said “Hi all gone.” And THAT wasn’t published until 40 years after Johnsen’s remarks, so Johnsen wasn’t borrowing from it.
Sure, we could hypothesize that Lindbergh bullied Johnsen into joining his grand eugenics conspiracy to get rid of the child. We could even hypothesize that Johnsen got “off the hook” in exchange for this. But Mark Falzini updated Johnsen’s history in
Their Fifteen Minutes, and just like the older Gow, he never admitted involvement in any such conspiracy.
Now let’s quote the famed American humorist Will Rogers:
hollywoodheyday.blogspot.com/2008/12/march-3-1932.htmlNow if people want to say Lindbergh bullied Red Johnsen, OK. But I challenge anyone to say he bullied Will Rogers. Note that this report is dated March 3, 1932, so it sounds like Lindbergh must have gotten Rogers “on board” mighty fast. Will Rogers? Lying to assist in a eugenics scheme to get rid of a baby? Doesn’t sounds Rogers’ profile at all.
Ok, I’ve quoted enough sources.
Michael, please feel free to rebut this post however you like. Again, I will NOT counter-rebut, in order to make it impossible for us to get back into those endless exchanges.