100 YEARS AGO A widow’s shifting story

Lena Stein, the widow who threatened to sell her 5-year-old daughter to provide her with a good life, retracted that threat and much of her previous story when representatives of the Associated Charities visited her home with offers of aid. Stein had told the Times Union she had been in Albany for four years and had been suffering from tuberculosis and unable to work, but now told the representatives she had only arrived here a week before from New York City, paying one week’s rent and worried about how to cover the next week.

She continued saying she wanted no financial assistance, however, only an offer from “some rich woman in the country ” to take her and her family in and care for them so she could recover. This time, she was in the company of her mother, who was said to also be ill and likewise could not work. The director of the Albany County Tuberculosis group examined Stein and said she was not incapacitated. Stein, though, refused to go to the hospital to have an X-ray done of her lungs or to be provided any medical attention (“All doctors are murderers,” she declared.), said any assistance offer had to require no working, and declined a job offer.

When Stein recognized the Times Union reporter accompanying the group, she refused to speak with her, instead launching into a rant against society. She said she was familiar with the many wealthy people in Albany and concluded that if they could have fine homes and $300 fur coats, they could take care of her and her child in the country for six weeks. “And why, if you make $10 a week,” she asked, “shouldn’t you give me $5 of it? You can work and I can’t. Why should you have $10 in your pocket and me not anything ?”