Mar 31st, 2016: The Black Stork

[xoxoxoBruce]

The Black Stork was a 1917 silent movie which played in select theaters, primarily in Indiana and the surrounding Midwest states, well into the 1920s. Written by a Chicago journalist, muckraker and theater critic Jack Lait, the film was produced by a film company owned by Lait’s boss, William Randolph Hearst, who loved truth, justice and the American way. No wait, that’s Superman, Hearst loved money, power, shit-stirring, and Rosebud. Billed by some as one of the first horror films, it promoted Eugenics.

That November, Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, chief surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago, was faced with a tough dilemma. A woman named Anna Bollinger had just given birth to a child, John, who suffered from severe birth defects. John had no neck or right ear and suffered from a serious skin ailment, all judged to be the result of syphilis likely passed on by his father. Dr. Haiselden knew that he could save the child’s life through a surgical procedure. But since he was familiar with the conditions into which Illinois’ “feeble-minded” were thrown after birth, he convinced the child’s parents to let John die at the hospital. When the news came out that the doctor wasn’t going to perform the necessary surgery, an unknown person tried to kidnap the child and take it to another hospital. The kidnapping attempt failed and John Bollinger died.

As you might imagine, when the story came to light, the shit hit the fan. Charges were made against Dr Haiselden, he was brought up before the medical board, and almost lost his license, but he had a lot of support…

Support for Dr. Haiselden, however, came from many famous social activists. Among them was Helen Keller — advocate for the disabled, a Socialist, and a eugenics supporter (at least in 1915.) Keller, who was blind and deaf since the age of one but thrived against all odds, published her views on the Haiselden case in The New Republic. She thought that children proven to be “idiots” by a “jury of expert physicians” could and perhaps should be put to death. (Keller was an amazing woman, but it’s hard not to view her trust in the opinions of “unprejudiced” medical “experts” as naive.) Chicago lawyer and civil liberties crusader Clarence Darrow — who famously went up against eugenics critic William Jennings Bryan at the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial — made no bones about his support for the surgeon: “Chloroform unfit children,” Darrow said. “Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.” Indiana Socialist Eugene V. Debs also supported Haiselden’s decision.

Dr. Haiselden had a back up plan if he had lost his license, he starred in The Black Stork.
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