Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A poor Irish woman named Mary Conner, about thirty years of age, being about to become a mother, on Sunday last applied for admission to Bellevue Hospital. She was at once taken in, and placed in what is known as the “waiting room,” where there were already several patients. During the evening she was attended by the physician, who did all that was necessary for her, and having made her comfortable, left her for the night, not anticipating that a child would be born before morning. He promised to see the woman again early in the morning, and accordingly he visited her at an early hour on Monday. In reply to his question regarding her condition, the suffering woman told him that she had been seized with the pains of labor during the night, and had been delivered of a child. On turning down the bed clothes, the physician did indeed find a child, but in what a horrible condition! The infant was dead, and its nose, the upper lip, the toes, and half the left foot, had been devoured by rats. The poor woman was aware that her child was dead, but had no idea of its mutilated condition.
When questioned regarding the affair, she stated that shortly after the child was born she felt something which she supposed to be rats running about the bed, but she was two sick and feeble to drive them away. In her semiconscious state, she says that she was aware that a number of rats were in and about the bed for the remainder of the night, but she had no suspicion of the horrible work in which they were engaged, or she would have tried to raise an alarm. The body of the child was taken from the room and a post mortem examination made. The lungs having been submitted to the hydrostatic test, it was ascertained beyond a doubt that the child was born alive. As there was neither physician nor nurse in attendance at the birth, and the mother was helpless, it is supposed that the child may have died for want of proper attention before the rats attacked it. The other patients heard no disturbance on the part of the mother during the night, and did not know that she was in labor until yesterday morning.-N.Y. Tribune, 25th.