There was a time when American women prided themselves on their
fragility. To be healthy, strong or plump was thought to be the height
of vulgarity, and refinement was held to be inseparable from leanness and
consumption. These views still obtain—so it is said—in Boston, and
especially in Bostonian literary circles; but elsewhere the American
woman is growing plump and healthy, and is actually proud of it. While
wise men are heartily glad of this change in female sentiment and tissue,
it must be admitted that there is one form of feminine fragility which
has its value. There is a rare condition of the bony system in which the
bones are so fragile that the slightest blow is sufficient to break them.
A baby thus afflicted cannot be handled, even by the most experienced
mother, without danger; and a man with fragile bones is so liable to be
broken, that there is sometimes no safety for him outside of a glass
case. The late Mrs. Baker—for that was her latest name—was not so
fragile that she could not be handled by a careful man, but still a very
light blow would usually break her. She did not share the Bostonian
opinion of the vulgarity of strength, but she was, nevertheless, very
proud of her fragility, and by its aid her husband managed to amass a
comfortable fortune within three years after their marriage. She is
perhaps the only fragile woman on record of whom it can be said that her
whole value consisted in her fragility, but, as her story shows, her
fragility was the sole capital invested in her husband’s business. In
January, 1870, Mrs. Baker—then a single woman, as to whose maiden name
there is some uncertainty—was married to Mr. Wheelwright—James G.
Wheelwright, of Worcester, Mass. Her husband married her on account of
her well-known fragility, but he treated her with such kindness that in
the whole course of their married life he never once broke her, even by
accident. In February, 1870, the Wheelwrights removed to Utica, N.Y.,
and one day Mr. Wheelwright took his wife to the railway station, and had
her break her leg in a small hole on the platform. He at once sued the
railway company for 10,000 dols., being the value set by himself on his
wife’s leg, and ten days afterwards accepted 5,000 dols. as a compromise,
and withdrew the suit The Wheelwrights left Utica in June, 1870, and in
the following August the dutiful Mrs. Wheelwright, who now called herself
Mrs. Thomas, broke her other leg in a hole in the platform of the railway
station at Pittsburg. Again her husband sued the railway company for
15,000 dols., and compromised for 6,500 dols. The leg was mended
successfully, and in July, 1871, we find the Thomases, now passing under
the name of Mr. and Mrs. Smiley, at Cincinnati, where Mr. Smiley, after
long searching, discovered a piece of ragged and uneven sidewalk, upon
which his wife made a point of falling and breaking her right arm. This
time the city was sued for 15,000 dols., and Mr. Smiley proved that his
wife was a school teacher by profession, and that the breaking of her arm
rendered it impossible for her to teach, for there as on that she could
not wield a rod or even a slipper. The city paid the 15,000 dols. and
the Smileys, having by honest industry thus made 26,500 dols., removed to
Chicago, and entered their names on the hotel register as Mr. and Mrs.
McGinnis, of Portland, Me. On the second day after their arrival at the
hotel, Mr. McGinnis found an eligible place on the piazza for Mrs.
McGinnis to break another leg, which that excellent woman promptly did.
The usual suit of 15,000 dols. was brought, and the hotel-keeper, fearing
that the notoriety of the suit would injure his hotel, was glad to
compromise by paying 8,000 dols. By this time, it is understood, Mrs.
McGinnis was willing to retire from business, but her husband had set his
heart on making 50,000 dols., and like a good wife she consented to break
some more bones. It should be said that there was very little pain
attending a fracture of any one of the lady’s bones, and that she did not
in the least mind the monotony of lying in bed while the broken bones
knitted themselves together. There can, therefore, be no charge of
cruelty brought against her husband. Indeed, she herself entered with a
hearty goodwill into the scheme of making a living with her bones, and
would go out to break a leg with as much cheerfulness as if she was going
to a theatre. In March, 1872, Mrs. Wilkins—hitherto known as Mr.
McGinnis—walked into an open trench in a street in St. Louis and broke
another leg. This time the suit brought by Mr. Wilkins against the city
did not succeed, and the inquiries which were put on foot as to the
antecedents of the Wilkinses fairly frightened them out of the city.
They turned up a month later in Detroit, where the weather was still
cold, and much snow had recently fallen. There were still 16,000 dollars
to be made before the industrious pair would have the whole of their
desired 50,000 dollars, and it was decided that Mrs. Wilkins—who had
changed her name to Mrs. Baker—should fall on the icy pavement and break
both arms. This, it was estimated, would be worth at least 8,000 dols.,
and it was hoped that the subsequent judicious breakage of two legs on
the premises of a Canadian railway would bring in 8,000 dols. more, after
which the Bakers intended to retire from business. Early one morning Mr.
Baker took his wife out and had her fall on a nice piece of ice, where
she broke both arms. Unfortunately, she fell more heavily than was
necessary, and, in addition, broke her neck and instantly expired. The
grief of Mr. Baker naturally knew no bounds, and he sued for 25,000
dols., all of which he recovered. He had thus made 59,500 dols. by the
aid of his fragile wife, and demonstrated that as a source of steady
income a woman who breaks easily is almost priceless. Still, nothing
could console him for the loss of his beloved partner, and he is to-day a
lonely and unhappy man.
—_New York Times_.