02/13/2025
The High-Heeled Shoes
It was an old black and white picture of a child. Laying there so still, as if asleep. Her pristine white dress meticulously laid out around her. A carnation in her tiny hand. Those crooked eyes, staring, wide open, hit me hard. The color of curdled milk. The eyes gave it away. Not sleeping at all.
I was helping my mom organize her photos. “Mom, who is this?” She barely glanced at the picture before she had to look away. “That was your grandma Allen’s sister Agnes. She died when she was ten.” Reverently, I asked, “what killed her?” “Your grandma said that she took too much laudanum and died.” I must have looked puzzled. “It was some kind of medicine that they used back then,” she said. I had never heard of laudanum, and I wondered why a ten-year old child would have been given laudanum. Could she have accidentally taken it herself? My mother had no idea.
From her bedroom closet, she brought out an old Blackstone cigar box. “Your grandma made me promise to keep this safe forever. These things belonged to your grandma’s little sister Agnes, she told me.” Handing it to me, her tone grew serious. “I’m giving that job to you someday. I know you’ll keep it safe for her.” I gingerly picked up the tiny plastic doll, its dress, withered with time. Her little flowered barrette, the metal, was no longer shiny. Agnes had died in April of 1922, after all.
She stopped to recall, then spoke. “Every year I took your grandma all the way to Bradford to the cemetery to lay flowers on Agnes’ grave.” “It was very important to her that everyone that she had lost got flowers too.” I already knew that my grandmother had suffered many losses at a young age. Her father, John, died from a heart attack just before Christmas in 1918 when Grandma was fourteen. An infant brother, gone, his stone, almost hidden by overgrown brush now. A sister, Marjorie, barely one, died when my grandma was only two.
I couldn’t erase the image of that tiny doll that once belonged to Agnes from my mind. I had to know why she had taken that Laudanum and died. Grandma had lost so many. Could this have been prevented? What I found left me heartbroken. Laudanum was a solution that was made by dissolving o***m powder derived from the poppy plant in alcohol making a ten percent solution. Initially, a water base was used until a man named Paracelsus discovered that it was more easily dissolved in alcohol. Back then, Laudanum was used for everything from teething pain to cough syrups. O***m was even described as the ‘Poor Child’s Nurse’ because it stopped hungry babies from crying. These syrups of white poppy were given by almost every mother and nurse to allay pain and to produce sleep. Some of the common ones were called Godfrey’s Cordial and Dalby’s Carminative. The mortality of infants that were caused by these medicines were incalculable. Half a dram of the syrup or a few drops of Dalby’s Carminative was fatal in just a few hours when given to some infants. Dosing fussy infants with Laudanum was so common in England in the 1800s that the Registrar-General Reports, which recorded annual population statistics, had to add a category for narcotic deaths. Between 1863 and 1867, 236 infant deaths were recorded though it was believed that many deaths went unreported. Though I could find no statistics for mortality from Laudanum in the United States, I would guess that it may be comparable to the rate in England. The deaths prompted the United States to pass the 1914 Harrison Narcotic Act which taxed and regulated the narcotic industry. It required registration for anyone dealing in opiates, including doctors.
Though Agnes was ten years old when she died, I still wanted to know why she may have been given it and if it had, caused her death. I ordered her death certificate which has not arrived. I was not able to find any other records regarding what had caused her death. When I browsed through several local historical newspapers, I was surprised to have only found one tiny mention of her death in a neighboring county, titled “Agnes Dennison,” which read, “Agnes Dennison, the 10-year-old daughter of Mrs. Ralph Wilcox died Saturday evening of heart trouble. The funeral was held Tuesday at 10 o’clock from[sic] the church. Burial in Bradford, N.Y.” I can only wonder if the Laudanum caused her breathing and then her heart to stop or if she had been given the Laudanum for a heart condition and then her death resulted. I was told that her father John, had died of a heart attack just four years before Agnes died. I would not be surprised if a heart problem is given as her cause of death on her death certificate though. My grandma Allen
Must have had a very strong heart to endure so much pain in her life.
Most of grandma’s recollections were of Agnes. Though grandma died when she was 103, I never got to ask about Agnes. She never talked to me about sad things. I relied on my mom to tell me. She recalled grandma’s words. “My little sister would love to watch me get dressed up in my finest dress and high-heeled shoes.” In child-like wonder, she would ask, “Can I wear high-heeled shoes like yours someday?” Grandma would laugh and always say “yes, when your feet get big enough, you can.” But I knew that the closest that Agnes would ever get to play dress-up was the picture that I had seen of her with a big gingham bow in her hair. Her feet would never get big enough to fill those high-heeled shoes either.
Thinking back, I never actually heard Grandma Allen say, “I love you” to anyone. Mom said, she never did. But Grandma had the sweetest smile, especially for the babies. Remembering my childhood, it was always grandma with a baby on her lap, smiling from ear to ear. Those brown eyes with flecks of amber, twinkling in delight. She was a strong German farmer’s wife. Her 103 years were filled with a lot of love, but also with many losses. She was a little bit like the homemade rolls that she made every Sunday. A little crusty on the outside but the inside was soft, warm and cozy like home. No one would ever fill grandma’s shoes, High-heeled, or not. That I knew for certain.
