Maria Christian

A LINK BETWEEN the workhouse in Bourne and the president of the United States may be hard to fathom and yet it happened as a result of the determination of young people in past times to seek a new life and overcome the difficulties they faced in a foreign land.

Times were hard for the working classes during the early 19th century, especially for the poorly paid agricultural labourers, and Robert Christian, then living with his wife Ann in Union Street [now St Peter’s Road], could not make ends meet with their large family of eight children and in the spring of 1869, one of their sons, John, decided to emigrate and seek his fortune in the New World.

During this period there was a mass immigration from Europe to America and it has been estimated that between 1836 and 1914, over 30 million Europeans made the transatlantic crossing when the death rate was high with one in seven passengers dying on the voyage. Steamships had only recently been introduced for the Atlantic run and life on board was cramped with few facilities other than those provided by the passengers themselves who were crammed below decks where they had to eat and sleep in restricted and often unhygienic conditions.

John, then aged 18, left Liverpool aboard the SS City of Antwerp bound for New York and by 1871 he was living in Waterloo, New York, and felt sufficiently confident to welcome two of his young sisters from Bourne who also made the Atlantic crossing, Annie, aged 18, and Maria, aged 16, who sailed from Liverpool aboard the SS City of New York. Thus began a struggle for survival in a strange country where social problems and the means of earning a livelihood were as harsh as they had been at home.

In 1876 Maria gave birth to her only child, Frank, and from then on she dedicated her life to raising him by doing menial jobs such as taking in washing and working as a maid. She never married. Her son was equally industrious, both at school and afterwards, installing monuments in the cemetery and driving the buggy for the local doctor who encouraged him to go to medical school. Once Frank was employed, he sent a cheque to his mother monthly for the rest of her life until she died in 1921.

Frank entered New York University in 1895 and later matriculated at Cornell University, graduating first class in 1899 and then spent three years as an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and as an assistant instructor in surgery at Cornell. While at Bellevue, the Galveston Hurricane occurred in Texas in September 1900 and he joined the relief expedition to help in the deadliest disaster ever to strike the United States with an estimated death toll of between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

In 1901, he was assigned to the New York City horse-drawn ambulances and in 1902, was appointed physician at the New York State Reformatory at Elmira, an institution with 1,500 inmates. He married May Therry, of New York City, in 1903 and they became the parents of five children. Then in 1917 he was appointed Superintendent at the reformatory in Elmira.

During World War One, Dr Christian served as an officer in the Medical Corps and with the 22nd Infantry, and later at the Military Prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He wrote many articles regarding the prison system and spoke all over the United States on the treatment of prisoners and the delinquency of youth. He was active in his community, including the Boy Scouts of America and the Elmira Board of Education. He was a good friend of Franklin D Roosevelt who, as Governor of New York State, asked him to take over Auburn Prison when rioting flared there in 1929. He was a strict disciplinarian, yet humane in his judgment, a student and a writer of considerable note on the subjects of criminology, eugenics and penology and was a competent judge of human nature.

Roosevelt became president in 1932 and throughout the 1930s and 1940s, his wife Eleanor corresponded with the doctor’s wife, May, on many occasions. Their daughter, Jean, stayed at the White House and gave a performance on her harp for the Roosevelts in the 1930s and Mrs Roosevelt visited the Christians at their home in Elmira in 1934.

His son, Frank, said of him: “My father was possessed of tremendous courage and great self confidence. His exploits in the prison business were known far and wide. He always walked headlong into situations where others feared to tread and where he sometimes had to fight to save his life.”

In 1939, two prisoners followed Dr Christian to his car and demanded he drive them out of the prison. Despite a knife held to his throat, the 63 year old doctor fought off his assailants until help arrived, receiving three stab wounds to the chest and narrowly escaped death. He retired three months later after 39 years at the Elmira Reformatory.

During his retirement from the prison system, Dr Christian heard frequently from former prisoners, many of them leading successful lives, who remembered him with great affection, for his fairness and support. He died on 18th October 1955, in Elmira, having made a positive impression on everyone he met.

John Christian married Mary Gibbs and died at Waterloo, New York, on 13th December 1929, aged 79. Annie became a U S citizen in 1881, married George H Andrews and died at Geneva, New York, on 20th April 1923, aged 72.

The parents Maria had left behind in Bourne knew little of their hardships and nothing of the success of their illustrious grandson. Ann died at her home in North Back Lane, Bourne, in November 1877, aged 65 years. Robert continued living on his own until poverty forced him into the workhouse where he died in February 1881, aged 82. Both were buried by the parish in the town cemetery where they lie today, many yards apart in separate unmarked graves. But their American family prospers and they are not forgotten.