by Amy Stewart
It should not have come as a surprise to anyone in the room that the deputy in question was a woman, for they must’ve all read about it in the papers by then. Nonetheless, there was a considerable amount of murmuring and shuffling as every eye in the room turned toward me. I stood and nodded to the Freeholders, the assembled audience, and the reporters busily scribbling in their notebooks.
Sheriff Heath went right on with his speech, which allowed me, to my relief, to take my seat again. “I hired Deputy Kopp to serve as jail matron and to handle the many difficult cases involving women and children in this county. She’s done an admirable job in that regard, but she’s also proven herself to be as capable a deputy as any other when it comes to chasing down a criminal or putting herself in danger to protect an honest citizen. Miss Kopp is the best police officer and detective in the state of New Jersey. She does not know the meaning of fear and with her bravery she uses brains. Her rescue of this inmate shows both quick thinking and fearlessness in the face of danger. For that I ask the Freeholders for their commendation.”
He’d gone too far and I knew it. The Freeholders murmured to one another. One of them looked over at Detective Courter, still standing on the side of the room, waiting his turn.
“I believe Mr. Courter from the prosecutor’s office has something to say about the matter,” one of the Freeholders said.
“I wasn’t aware Detective Courter was present at the moment this rescue took place,” Sheriff Heath said, but it was no use. He was asked to yield the podium and he did. Detective Courter marched up in that prideful manner he had, with his chin held very high above a stiff collar.
“Gentlemen, citizens, and members of the press,” he began. I sighed and slumped down into my seat. “I’ve said before that the sheriff has no business transporting inmates and should never have been entrusted with the job. He’s proven that he can’t reliably keep hold of a man outside the confines of the jail. I don’t have to remind you that one of his deputies allowed an inmate to escape last year from the Hackensack Hospital.”
I could see only the back of Sheriff Heath’s head. I would’ve rushed to his defense if I knew how, but I could think of no course of action other than to sit by and watch Detective Courter do his damage.
“Now we have another escape, and it comes at too high a cost of public safety, not to mention the monetary expense. Sheriff Heath insists on keeping a matron on his staff, at the same salary as any other deputy, in spite of the fact that there are eighty or ninety men in jail on any given day, and fewer than a dozen women. Why they require the paid services of a full-time attendant passes understanding, unless they are to receive a fresh coiffure every morning and change into formal gowns for dinner.”
That brought a laugh from the audience and a few expectant glances in my direction. Did they think I’d laugh at his joke? I did not. Morris sat alongside me, equally stone-faced.
Detective Courter went on. “Now, I don’t blame the lady deputy for allowing this inmate to escape. She never should’ve been given charge of him in the first place. It was sloppy work on the sheriff’s part that led to this mishap. But to hand out awards at a moment like this would be a misuse of the duties of this board. Instead, I asked that the Freeholders issue a letter of censure to Sheriff Heath over his mishandling of the case, and that they permanently revoke from him the authority to transport inmates.
“The county physician, Dr. Ogden, whom you see here today, took charge of carrying two lunatics to Morris Plains after Sheriff Heath failed to do so. It is my recommendation that the county physician take responsibility for all inmate transportation henceforth. This is a matter not only of the inmates’ health, but also of public safety. We cannot risk another criminal breaking free on his way to the lunatic asylum. And if an inmate escape isn’t enough, consider this: the girl deputy was so heartbroken over the commitment of Mrs. Anna Kayser that she took it upon herself to march down to the office of that lady’s personal physician and argue for her release. The sheriff’s office seems determined to set lunatics free, for reasons that escape my understanding.” He put a special emphasis on the word escape, which seemed to delight his friends on the board.
With that, he stood apart from the podium and gestured at Sheriff Heath, as if to give him back his place. It was a nasty trick on Detective Courter’s part to fling accusations at the sheriff and force him to defend himself in so public a forum, but the sheriff didn’t hesitate.
“Gentlemen, I didn’t come here tonight to hear criticism of my decisions, or to open up for discussion the question of the transportation of inmates. But you’re entitled to hear about it and to make your own decision. This office never asked to be responsible for inmate transport. If the Freeholders believe that the county physician is better qualified for the job, he is welcome to it. Now, as for the subject I brought before you. It shouldn’t matter whether the deputy is a man or woman. Inmates will try to escape. It is in their nature to do so. You would, too, if you were facing a sentence at Morris Plains.”
This brought a smattering of laughter from the Freeholders and a nod from one of them to the page, who hastened to pass the tray of cookies again.
“I will answer to any man who has questions about the expenses I incur in the running of this jail. As to the employment of Deputy Kopp—many of you didn’t realize that we had been running the jail without a woman on staff to look after the female inmates!”
The Freeholders looked a little uncomfortable with that, but the audience mumbled its assent. “You didn’t realize that. You don’t seem to understand that had your wife been arrested, and brought to the county jail, and lodged in a steel cell, unable to get away, that a man would hold the keys to all those doors. Would you like it? Of course not. We want a matron in that county jail, and the taxpayers ought to appreciate the fact that we are doing the work with one matron, not three. And when it’s necessary, Deputy Kopp stays there all night in her own jail cell, without a word of complaint. She goes out on calls when a woman is to be arrested and carries out all the other duties of a deputy. I can assure you that she puts herself in danger and steps willingly into the most desperate of circumstances to offer help to those in need, and to protect you, the members of the public. If you had any understanding of what my deputies do, you would award each one of them a medal on the spot. But if you instead want to haggle over expenses, and argue over which of your public servants is best qualified to handle one or more of the endless number of difficult duties we perform every day, please go on. I have nothing more to say on it.”
With that he left the podium. The Freeholders’ clerk reminded the board that they had a motion before them to award a medal to me.
I would’ve rather marched out of the room than stand there and watch them take a vote on an honor I hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. But there were too many eyes on me, and on Sheriff Heath, who had come to the back of the room to stand alongside me. So I did the only thing I could have, which was to keep my face perfectly composed and to stand calmly, with my hands at my side, as the vote went around the room and the Freeholders defeated the motion.
16
No Medal for Miss Kopp
hackensack, n.j.—The Bergen County Board of Freeholders, instead of giving Miss Constance Kopp, the only woman Deputy Sheriff in New Jersey, a medal, passed a resolution today taking from the sheriff’s office the privilege of conveying insane persons or prisoners to Morris Plains or other asylums. This followed on the heels of Miss Kopp’s rescue of an insane man who had plunged into the Hackensack River. Miss Kopp was in charge of a crazy man and an insane woman when the man got away. County Detective Courter in his report to the Freeholders said that “the escape should not have been possible.”
“I can’t say that I disagree with him,” Norma said. “Sheriff Heath put you in an untenable position. I don’t blame you for it, of course.”
“If you’re going to blame someone, you have to blame me,” I said irritably. “If I’m to be given all th
e responsibilities of the job, I have to accept all the blame. What they don’t understand is that every inmate wants to escape. They try it all the time.”
“But he was Morris’s man,” Norma said.
“Morris was ill that day. Anyone could’ve taken a tumble in that mud. It’s precisely why we go out in pairs.”
“I’m only saying that Mr. Courter is right to criticize the sheriff,” Norma said.
“I believe you’re obligated to oppose Mr. Courter, if you live in this house,” Fleurette put in.
“It is simply a fact that we never used to have inmates escaping like this,” Norma said, as if the inmates were somehow hers to lose.
“I’m sure we did,” I said, “but the goings-on at the jail were never of such concern to this household before. What you don’t see in the papers is that Sheriff Heath is going around and telling everyone exactly what he’s done in office, and what he’d like to do in Congress. William Conklin is saying the same. They’ve been well received every time they’ve gone to speak. They’re doing just fine.”
“Oh, I’m sure they’re fine,” Norma said, “but that’s not the same as winning votes.” She shoved a plate of sandwiches across the table as if to bring the matter to a conclusion, which was fine with me.
Lunch at our house took place around the kitchen table and was usually hastily assembled by Norma and prepared to Norma’s tastes. On that particular day, the sandwiches were of brown bread, chipped roast, and pickles. Fleurette ate the bread only, with far too much butter. I ate two of the beef sandwiches and would’ve had a third had Norma not taken it, so I rummaged around and found some cold chicken instead.
None of us were terribly good cooks. We were raised on plain Austrian food by a mother who was distrustful of foreign influences at her kitchen table, and accordingly rejected every competing cuisine that had ever shouldered its way into Brooklyn’s markets during our childhood. An occasional dish from the French countryside was not entirely out of the ordinary, as my grandmother had been French, but for the most part, we subsisted on potatoes and cabbage, sausages and roasted meats, buttered noodles and dumplings. Norma didn’t like to cook any more than I did, but I was home so unpredictably that it simply fell to her. (There was no question of Fleurette cooking: she considered toast and jam a perfectly fine dinner.)
As we finished our lunch, there came the sound of an auto in the drive. Fleurette ran over to the window to look. It belonged to Norma’s friend (her first and only friend, as far as anyone knew), Carolyn Borus. The two of them had become the oddest of acquaintances: Norma was no nicer or more generous to Carolyn than she was to anyone else, but Carolyn was mysteriously blind to Norma’s social deficits and, equally inexplicably, fascinated by messenger pigeons and thoroughly in support of any plan to deploy them that Norma contrived.
In an effort to avoid hearing any talk of pigeons, Fleurette dashed into her sewing room and I washed up the dishes from lunch. I ventured into the dining room a little later, where I found Norma and Carolyn at the table, bent over a set of cryptic drawings. The discussion revolved around axles, hickory shafts, and hinged rear gates. They appeared to be designing a buggy of the sort used to transport goats or ponies.
“What happened to your pigeons?” I asked.
“This has everything to do with pigeons and nothing to do with you,” Norma said, without looking up from the drawings.
I sat down across from them and unlaced my boots.
“I wish you’d go upstairs and take a bath and not put your feet all over everything,” Norma said. I picked up a metal protractor she’d unearthed from Francis’s school things, and she took it away from me. “You didn’t tell us what happened with the lunatic.”
“Lunatic?” asked Carolyn with interest.
“She’s not a lunatic. That’s just the point,” I said. “Her doctor had her committed on complaint of her husband. The woman herself was never examined.”
“What does our lawyer say?” Norma asked.
“When did she become our lawyer? You wanted nothing to do with this.”
“I don’t know why you don’t answer simple questions.”
“We went to pay a visit to the husband. He wasn’t home. He brought a lady in to clean, but she’s nervous as a cat and doesn’t seem to have charge of the household at all. It’s suspicious.”
“Well, I don’t know what else you can do about it,” Norma said.
“We’re going to the asylum.”
“You don’t mean to say you’re visiting a lunatic asylum?” put in Carolyn. “You Kopp sisters aren’t afraid of anything, are you?”
“I don’t have anything to fear from the asylum, but if Sheriff Heath finds out that I’m sneaking around on this Kayser case, that’s another matter.”
Norma’s pencil lead broke and she reached for a knife. “In a month or so, he’ll be in Washington or wherever the voters send him. What he thinks about your inmates won’t matter much longer.”
“Well, I think it’s wonderful what you do with the less fortunate,” Carolyn told me. “You should get some sort of award for it.”
“We’ve rather soured on awards around this house,” said Norma.
But Carolyn was still looking at me pensively. “I can just picture you out giving lectures. You should go around to other cities and tell them how you’ve done it here in Bergen County. I’m sure that every policewoman who comes into the job must feel as though she has to invent it for herself. You ought to go around and tell them how to do it properly.”
I confess that I’d thought of doing that very thing. I hadn’t dared say it to Norma, because to go and give a lecture would require travel, and Norma was constitutionally opposed to venturing too far away from home or having any of her relations do so. But, in fact, a policewoman in Los Angeles had formed an international association the year before. Now they were holding conferences and electing officers. I imagined that I might have a place with a group like that someday.
I could see myself visiting other cities, and meeting other policewomen, and giving a speech about the good work that I’d done in Hackensack with Sheriff Heath. By then he’d be a congressman, which I wouldn’t mind boasting about.
There was no reason, really, why I couldn’t help to write the book on how a woman’s version of policing ought to be done. Such were my ambitions on a grand scale.
But I hadn’t said a word about that to either Norma or Fleurette, and I was surprised that Carolyn had guessed at it so easily. If it weren’t for my obligations at home, I would’ve liked to advance to a more prominent position in a big city. New York had already hired a lady detective. Chicago and Philadelphia had women commanding their own units. I could rise in the ranks, if only I were free to go.
But what would Norma do without me? And how could I leave Fleurette?
Norma noticed my silence and looked up. “I’ll send a pair of pigeons with you to the asylum. If you run into trouble, you can send word.”
“You don’t suppose a pair of pigeons under my coat might attract suspicion?” I pushed aside a stack of newspapers—which Norma was using for her mysterious sketches, as she hated to waste clean paper—and dropped my elbows on the table.
Norma hoisted an eyebrow aloft and said, “You’ll be the only deputy using trained pigeons in all of New Jersey, or I suppose anywhere in the country, and you’ll be in the papers all over again, although I don’t suppose you’d get as many marriage proposals out of it, which is just as well, because you’re ill-suited for matrimony.”
Norma had a way of sending a conversation into any direction, however unexpected, as long as it allowed her to make a final pronouncement and put an end to the matter. She took up her ruler and made another set of marks.
17
geraldine arranged an auto from New York City so we wouldn’t have to rely on trains and trolleys to get us to Morris Plains. She’d worked herself into a state of genuine excitement over the case and didn’t mind making the investment in car fare.
“What the public doesn’t realize,” she said, as we rode together to the asylum, “is that so many of these commitments are private affairs, with little more than a nod from a sleepy judge who simply takes the good doctor at his word. A woman can hire a lawyer and put up a fight, but most of them don’t know that and, anyway, who would pay for it? The husband certainly wouldn’t give her the money if he’s the one having her committed.”
“Then these cases must not come before you very often,” I said.
“Almost never, in my corner of the law. It’s nothing but wills and trusts, and the occasional business matter, and all those divorces. I might see an accusation of insanity in the course of a divorce hearing, but it’s my duty to keep things civil and to see the matter carried through without anyone being locked away. I’ve never had a client committed, and I’ve certainly never seen the inside of an asylum. Have you?”
“My inmates have been committed to Morris Plains, but I never had reason to go inside.”
“I’m sure it’s dreadful,” Geraldine said.
We arrived at Morris Plains just before the appointed hour. Behind the gates sat an imposing building of heavy gray stone, five stories high, topped by a mansard roof sheathed in copper. Stone columns stretched for three stories above the entrance, giving it a look of grandeur, but there was something grim and fortress-like about it, too, particularly in the way the narrow windows were covered in metal grates. Alongside the main building sat several smaller structures in the same style, as the facility seemed to be in a constant state of expansion. The grounds went on as far as I could see, and in the distance there were fruit orchards and a truck farm.
A guard at the gate was expecting us. He told us to drive through, and showed the driver where he could wait. A nurse came out to meet us.
“Dr. Evans will speak to you first. He has charge of Mrs. Kayser’s care.” She didn’t ask our names and seemed not to wonder why there were two of us, but Dr. Evans did.