SECRET PAST OF GERTIE’S BABIES
They were sold on the black market for $ 100 by illegal abortionist Gertrude Pitkanen. Now grown- up, all they want to do is fi nd the relatives they never knew existed
WHEN three middle- aged women met for lunch at a restaurant in Butte, Montana, in the early 1990s they happened to mention to the owner that they had all been born in the town and adopted.
“Oh, you’re Gertie’s Babies!” he said before he could stop himself – but no amount of cajoling could persuade him to expand on what he had just said.
However Sue Docken, Bonnie Gower and Mable Deane knew enough by then to understand exactly whom he was referring to: Gertrude Pitkanen, a chiropractor turned backstreet abortionist and baby traffi cker who had plied her trade in Butte for two decades up to the mid- 1950s.
From that day forward they took the name Gertie’s Babies as the title of their campaign to discover the truth about their origins and the origins of dozens – if not hundreds – of other babies sold by Pitkanen for as little as $ 100 to parents desperate to adopt.
No description of the scale of Pitkanen’s activities is complete without an explanation of the unique character of Butte at the time in question. During its heyday in the fi rst half of the 20th century it was one of the largest and most notorious copper boom towns in the American north- west. With no communities of any comparable size for hundreds of miles, demand from the infl ux of miners meant it soon boasted hundreds of saloons and one of the most famous redlight districts in the country.
Gertrude, whose doctor husband Gustave died in 1930 leaving her a thriving abortion practice, soon became known as the go- to person for unwed mothers, pregnant prostitutes, expectant mistresses of powerful married men, or – during the war years – wives who could not account for a baby while their husbands were away at the front.
Abortion in those days was a perilous procedure. Indeed Pitkanen was arrested and charged with manslaughter no fewer than three times after botched operations led to the death of the patient. ( Some say her not guilty verdicts stemmed less from a lack of evidence than the little black book the woman, who knew the secrets of many a bedchamber, would wave at the judge as he was mulling over his decision.)
In the circumstances many women preferred to give birth to unwanted children – a decision that opened up a new market for Gertie: selling babies on the black market.
Sue Docken’s story of her own “adoption” 64 years ago illustrates just how clinical a procedure this was. Determined to make the transaction as speedy as possible Pitkanen instructed the adoptive father to stay in his car with the engine running while his wife went up to her third- fl oor offi ce at 115 Hamilton Street to hand over $ 500 and pick up the baby.
THERE she was offered a peek through a curtain at the young mother lying in a bed before being ushered out with the infant, still wrapped up with the afterbirth which they threw out of the car window on the drive home.
Like a number of other Gertie’s Babies, Sue’s attempts to track down relatives drew a blank at the moment she ordered a copy of her birth certifi cate. It carried only the names of her adoptive parents.
Heather Livergood was luckier. Born in a Butte motel room in 1946 she was bought for $ 100. Fortunately for her the birth certifi cate signed by Pitkanen did include the apparently real name of her natural mother: Violet Wilson. In her desperation to uncover the truth about her origins Heather signed up to ancestry. com, a website which offers a DNA- matching service to people who send in a cheek swab of their own genetic material. Last year she was put in touch with a cousin who proved to be an enthusiastic ally in her quest. He combed family records and memories to come up with a woman called Violet, who had lived in Grantsville, Utah.
In the months that followed Heather was able to piece together the story of why she had been abandoned as a child. It was when she tracked down her two half- brothers Bob and Gary that she made her big breakthrough: her mother’s real name was not Wilson but Sandberg.
They said that her biological aunt Julia had told her children before she died that Violet had had an affair with a man in Montana in 1945 while her husband Evan was fi ghting in the Pacifi c with the Army Air Corps. Pregnant with another man’s child she travelled 40 miles from Grantsville to Butte to give birth – and left the future of the baby to Gertie.
Heather has no complaints about her upbringing. While her adoptive mother died when she was just three, her “great, very funny and outgoing” father raised her with his second wife. Now she is building a relationship with her halfbrothers and since visiting them last year keeps in touch.
Meanwhile the story of Mable Deane offers an insight into the way Pitkanen’s network of parents eager to adopt was developed. Having found a child of her own through Pitkanen in 1949, Mable’s adoptive mother Margaret Page set about helping neighbours who were in a similar plight.
Bonnie Gower recalls how it happened in her case. Having adopted two boys her parents were keen to have a girl but the authorities would only allow two placements per family. “They told me about a Mrs Margaret Page, a wonderful woman in the Gallatin Valley who got babies,” she says. “They said they drove to Butte with Mrs Page but sat in the car in front of Dr Pitkanen’s offi ce while Mrs Page went up to get me.”
WHEN Mable pumped a reluctant brother for more details of their mother’s activities he revealed that she had been responsible for bringing at least seven Butte babies to the Gallatin Valley. Apart from Mable and Bonnie one of them was Sue Docken.
Mable’s brother also gave a clue as to how many babies Pitkanen had traffi cked in all. “He said mother was only responsible for about a quarter of Gertrude’s babies.” This would put the total number of infants sold by Pitkanen at 28 but some believe this to be a signifi cant underestimate.
Perhaps the most unfortunate of Gertie’s Babies were the ones she adopted as her own. Pitkanen is said to have taken on fi ve in all, including three born on the same day by different mothers whom she passed off as triplets. She even used them to humanise herself when she campaigned for the elected post of coroner, claiming they had been left on her doorstep.
Bonnie Gower later learned from one of the children that, in a horrifying example of her greed, Pitkanen had tried to force one of her adopted sons and his wife to let her sell their fi rst child.
“I thank my lucky stars that I wasn’t placed within Gertie’s house,” says Heather. “It’s a known fact that she used to beat the children she kept. Personally I think she was a very clever and devious woman.”
Pitkanen died in 1960 at the age of 82, taking the parenthood secrets of dozens of children to her grave. In a bizarre postscript one of the major benefi ciaries of her will was an institution in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, called the Widows And Children’s Home.