Society lady fought for less fortunate
One of those fascinating figures now largely lost to history, Grace Humiston was for years well-known to the readers of New York newspapers.
A society lady, married first to a doctor and then to a lawyer, Grace Quakenbos Humiston started attending New York University law school at night and then transferred to the regular program. After completing the three- year course in two years, she was admitted to the bar in 1905.
Humiston set up a law practice dedicated to helping the poor, particularly immigrants, and also committed herself to bringing an end to what was then called “white slavery,” human trafficking of underage girls.
At the heart of Brad Ricca’s absorbing and wideranging book is one case in ■ which the lawyer, who was appointed the first female consulting detective to the New York Police Department, became involved.
In February 1917, 18-year-old Ruth Cruger left her home in Harlem carrying her ice skates and disappeared. She was last seen at a motorcycle shop that advertised “skates sharpened.” It was owned by Italian immigrant Alfredo Cocchi, who had a good relationship with the policemen of the area, and who left for Italy, abandoning his wife and children, shortly after Ruth’s disappearance.
After what appeared to be a slipshod investigation, the police determined that Ruth had probably run off with a boyfriend.
Humiston wasn’t convinced, and she and her chief investigator delved into the mystery, with Humiston going so far as to buy the motorcycle-shop building so she could take a closer look at its basement.
Her investigation earned her the nickname “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” in the press, to which she demurred, “No, I never read Sherlock Holmes. In fact, I am not a believer in deduction. Common sense and persistence will always solve a mystery.”
Ricca, whose previous “Super Boys” examined the lives of the creators of Superman and who teaches at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, shapes a narrative out of the few facts that are known about Humiston, including other cases and her expeditions to the South, where she went undercover in order to find out what had happened to the immigrants who had been taken into virtual slavery in turpentine camps and cotton plantations.
The book expands out to show a wide-angle view of New York during this period, where the influence of the Black Hand, a largely Italian “secret criminal organization or, possibly, a loose collection of individual criminals,” was widespread, and colored several of the crimes Humiston investigated.
Though “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” is in part a “true crime” story, it largely steers away from lurid details in favor of the larger issues of abduction of girls and women during this period, as well as the societal pressures exerted on immigrants and the efforts of one woman to make a dent in the injustice and suffering she observed.