About 10 o’clock last night Officer Andrew Brown saw a middle-aged colored man near Sixth and Morgan streets, with a suspicious looking bundle in his arms. The officer hailed him and wanted to know what the bundle contained. The colored man told the officer that it was a baby, but not giving further satisfactory answers, was taken to the Third District Station, where the man was more communicative to Sergt. Sam. Body, who was in charge of the office. The colored man said the baby, which was in the neighborhood of a week old, was given to him by Dr. Jocelyn, corner of Sixth and Olive streets, with instructions to take it to St. Ann’s Orphan Asylum, corning of Tenth and O‘Fallon streets, and leave it there. The colored man said the mother of the baby and the Doctor’s wife were both sick at the Doctor’s house, and the crying of the baby disturbed them, and that was the reason he was sent to the Orphan Asylum with it. The colored man had no written message to the Sisters, and it being against the rules of that institution to receive infants after night, unless brought by an officer, Sergeant Boyd told the colored man to take it back where he got it from, and to tell the Doctor to attend to the matter in the daytime. He also sent an officer along with the negro to see that it was safely delivered.
The negro said he had worked for Dr. Jocelyn four or five years, off and on, and this was the first time he had ever been sent on such an errand. Source: St. Louis Globe-Democrat April 30, 1877
No point to this other than WTF?
On a different note, I noticed that Word Perfect’s spell checker flags “negro.” Oh, come on. I’m not one to ordinarily complain about political correctness, but really?