Toronto Gazette: Sunday, December 24, 1904
Headline: Toronto Detective Performs Surgery to Save His Wife and Unborn Child
Story:
Detective William Murdoch and his wife, Dr. Julia Ogden, arguably Toronto's most famous couple, became the proud parents of a healthy baby boy, William Lionel Murdoch, on Thursday evening after the detective performed a complex surgical procedure on his wife to deliver their son. The day's snowstorm combined with Dr. Ogden's early labor forced the couple to take matters into their own hands as they were unable to get to the hospital for Dr. Isaac Tash to perform the transverse Cesarean section. The innovative procedure was essential because Dr. Ogden has a condition that would result in the death of both herself and the child if she attempted to deliver the child in the traditional way.
Fortunately, Dr. Ogden is a physician herself and is quite familiar with the new procedure, and she had a medical bag in their home with most of the needed supplies. She entered into labor around eight o'clock on the evening of December 21st, causing the couple much concern. Fearing for Dr. Ogden's life, as well as that of their unborn child, Dr. Ogden taught her husband, himself well-covered in this paper for his keen intellect and adaptive abilities in response to solving crimes, how to perform the surgery. Detective Murdoch explained, "I had to cut a smile-shaped line across Julia's lower abdomen just above her pubic bone, then reach in and separate the muscles to expose the uterus, cut open the uterus, remove our baby, tend to nostril plugs for his breathing, cut the umbilical cord, remove the placenta, suture the uterus back up, and then suture her abdomen. In between contractions, Julia taught me the angle, depth and pressure to use with the scalpel on a chicken we had for tomorrow's dinner." He performed all but the last step which was done by William Jr.'s godmother, Dr. Emily Grace, who arrived at the Murdoch's home around ten o'clock. Adding to the challenge, the detective had to perform all these steps without the guidance of his wife because she needed to be under the influence of anesthesia – in this case they had chloroform at their home.
As soon as the ambulance was able to get through the snow-covered streets, mother and newborn were transported to the closest hospital, the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children. As fate would have it, Dr. Ogden's former husband, Dr. Darcy Garland, was the head administrator of this hospital before he was murdered by a nemesis of Detective Murdoch's in an attempt to frame Dr. Ogden for the murder. The famous trial of Dr. Ogden (which originally resulted in her conviction before her being exonerated when Detective Murdoch provided evidence incriminating the actual murderer, James Gilles) exposed the couple's scandalous affair and desire for Dr. Garland to grant Dr. Ogden a divorce so the couple could marry. When asked if she felt guilty about relying on her dead husband's hospital for care, Dr. Ogden took the opportunity to "tell all" to the public. She expressed regret for marrying Dr. Garland when she knew her, "heart would always belong to Detective Murdoch." She explained why she did so, "It's so ironic that the reason that I left William was because of my condition rendering me unable to give him children, and Darcy didn't want children. It was only after I married Darcy that I learned that William still loved me despite my inability to bear children. William and I did not intend for me to get pregnant, but I did. I never would have thought back then that science would come up with a way to solve this problem, but here we are."
Dr. Tash predicts that Dr. Ogden will remain in hospital care for at least three more weeks. She experienced a great deal of blood loss during the procedure and is also very likely to encounter problems with infection - even though Detective Murdoch washed his hands with iodine soap and switched to a different scalpel than the one used to practice on the chicken before performing the procedure. As for William Jr., he will remain in the hospital as well. It seems that his father cut too deeply through the uterine wall and nicked the infant's left shoulder with the scalpel, requiring seven stitches.
Typical of the unconventional couple's style, William Jr. is unlikely to be raised in a traditional manner. Dr. Ogden intends to return to work after about a year. A nanny will be in charge of much of the care for their son during Dr. Ogden's working hours. We here at the Gazette wish them the best of luck.
Reading Between the Lines:
The Murdoch's, being a modern couple, used contraception to prevent pregnancy. They did so because they knew that Dr. Ogden's scarred cervix (resulting from an abortion years earlier) would not allow childbirth, and thus pregnancy would result in Dr. Ogden's death or the need to have another abortion. They had also made a decision to forgo the use of a prophylactic during menstruation as their scientific research indicated that women were not fertile at this stage of their menstrual cycle. Despite these precautions, Dr. Ogden did get pregnant.
Ironically, Dr. Tash would have been in prison if Detective Murdoch had turned him in as abortionist years earlier, and thus the he and his wife would not have been able to turn to him for help. Even after Detective Murdoch acknowledged this, the two men were not comfortable around each other. When the Murdoch's met with Dr. Tash to discuss Dr. Ogden's pregnancy, they both believed that they were going to need to ask Dr. Tash to perform an illegal abortion to save Dr. Ogden's life. Stressful for anyone, this was one of the hardest things William Murdoch would ever have to do. During their appointment, Dr. Tash informed them of the medical advances in performing cesarean sections due to the development of using a transverse incision (Ferdinand Kehrer in 1881), uterine suturing (Max Sanger in 1882) and smile-shaped curved incision (Hermann Pfannenstiel in 1900). Dr. Tash also advised them that there was a higher risk in Dr. Ogden's case of miscarriage due to the scarring of the cervix affecting the formation of the mucus plug on the cervix. Elated, the Murdoch's decided to take the risk to Dr. Ogden's life in the hopes that they could have a child of their own.
The hospital staff at the Victoria Hospital for Sick Children originally harbored ill will toward the Murdoch's. However, fairly quickly many of the nurses became enamored with the couple – particularly the detective, and came to go above and beyond the call of duty when it came to caring for them (showing the detective how to change a diaper and providing extra pillows to aid in breast feeding, etc.). After the story in the Toronto Gazette came out, the Murdoch's had the support of all at the hospital. The story also rendered them to become highly popular among the public – at least for awhile.