Unwanted Wives

By J. Gunnar Grey

Carlyle Harris and Robert Buchanan had several things in common. Both worked in the medical field, with Harris a medical student and Buchanan a practicing physician. Both lived in New York City in the early 1890s. And both had wives they didn't want.

5,000 words

*****

Helen Potts met Carlyle Harris in the summer of 1889 at a
cotillion held at the Coleman House, Ocean Grove, NJ. She was eighteen, and at
twenty-one, he'd completed his first year as a medical student at Columbia
University in Manhattan. She was a beautiful, dark-haired young lady with a
svelte figure and soulful expression; he looked rather like a lightweight Teddy
Roosevelt with slicked-back hair parted down the middle, pince nez, a mustache,
and wide tie. They spent time together in the company of friends, appropriate
for that Victorian era, and when they parted in the autumn, Harris returning to
Columbia and Helen moving with her mother into a New York City flat, Mrs.
Cynthia Potts had no notion of ever meeting the young man again.

But he came calling in New York and his increasingly marked
attentions to Helen were not received kindly by her mother. Helen was too young
to consider matrimony, Mrs. Potts insisted when her daughter mentioned an
engagement. Instead, Mrs. Potts tried to put some distance between the two and
among other restrictions, she required they only see each other in company,
never alone.

On February 7, 1890, Harris invited Helen to visit the New
York Stock Exchange with him, telling Mrs. Potts that McCready Harris, his
younger brother, would be coming along, too. Her conditions fulfilled, Mrs.
Potts agreed.

But Harris lied.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dingbat Publishing
• Release date: Apr 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476404776

Book preview

Unwanted Wives

The Helen Potts and Anna Sutherland cases

by

J. Gunnar Grey

Dingbat Publishing

Humble, Texas

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 J. Gunnar Grey

Published in the United States of America 2012 by Dingbat Publishing, Humble, Texas

Unwanted Wives: The Helen Potts and Anna Sutherland Cases

Copyright © 2012 J. Gunnar Grey

ISBN 978-1476404776

Cover Art by Dingbat Publishing, featuring photo of Helen Potts

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When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He has nerve and he has knowledge.

Sherlock Holmes in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, by Arthur Conan Doyle

Part One: Helen Potts

Helen Potts met Carlyle Harris in the summer of 1889 at a cotillion held at the Coleman House, Ocean Grove, NJ. She was eighteen, and at twenty-one, he'd completed his first year as a medical student at Columbia University in Manhattan. She was a beautiful, dark-haired young lady with a svelte figure and soulful expression; he looked rather like a lightweight Teddy Roosevelt with slicked-back hair parted down the middle, pince nez, a mustache, and wide tie. They spent time together in the company of friends, appropriate for that Victorian era, and when they parted in the autumn, Harris returning to Columbia and Helen moving with her mother into a New York City flat, Mrs. Cynthia Potts had no notion of ever meeting the young man again.

But he came calling in New York and his increasingly marked attentions to Helen were not received kindly by her mother. Helen was too young to consider matrimony, Mrs. Potts insisted when her daughter mentioned an engagement. Instead,