A couple's fateful choice

Blanche Irene Maver grew up on Pleasant Street in Quincy, Massachusetts, as the oldest child of granite stonecutter George Maver and his wife Annie (Cole).

By the time she was a teenager the family had moved to North Pearl Street in Brockton, and a few years later, as a young adult, she obtained a job as the bookkeeper for the town’s cemetery, which she held for two decades.

The fun-loving, bespectacled girl with the short, bobbed hair finally became a wife when she exchanged vows with shoe salesman Ralph Stewart Gilman.

When Blanche discovered at Goddard Hospital, in October 1943, that she was pregnant, the 39-year-old and her 50-year-old husband made the decision not to add to their family. They were informed by an unknown source that a man named Peter Lorenzo of Johnston could help them.

Fifty-four-year-old Lorenzo lived at 98 Spring St. in Johnston with his 49-year-old wife, Gladys. Standing at 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighing about 185 pounds with dark skin, black hair and brown eyes, he had come to America from Italy in 1900. A longtime professional photographer who had once maintained a studio on Weybosset Street in Providence, he turned toward the medical sciences around 1930 and became a chiropractor and physical therapist.

The Gilmans drove to Lorenzo’s home on Jan. 23, 1944. When he asked what he could do for them, the couple explained that they wished to have an abortion performed on Blanche. The trio stepped outside. Lorenzo wanted to be assured that they had received his name and contact information from a trusted person. Content they had, he instructed them to be at his office on the 28th at 2:30 in the afternoon. The cost for the operation, he explained, would be at least $100.

Later that week, the Gilmans arrived at Market Square at about 2 o’clock and parked their car. They then walked to 350 Westminster Street and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

Lorenzo’s office consisted of three rooms – a waiting room and a treatment room with another room between them. Lorenzo met them in the waiting room and took them into the middle area. There, he instructed Blanche to continue on to the treatment room and remove specific articles of clothing. After Blanche entered the treatment room, Lorenzo informed Ralph that the fee was usually paid in advance. Ralph pulled out ten ten-dollar bills and handed them to Lorenzo. Lorenzo then went into the treatment room and shut the door.

Not more than five minutes later, the doctor emerged from the treatment room and informed Ralph that his wife was responding well and that if they could wait for about 45 minutes, they would not have to return the following day. When Lorenzo opened the door of the treatment room to go back inside where Blanche was lying on the wooden bed, Ralph heard her crying, “Oh, doctor! Oh, doctor!”

Forty-five minutes passed and the door opened again. Lorenzo stepped up to Ralph and handed him a box of white tablets. He told him to administer them to Blanche according to the directions he had written on the box. He could take her home now, he explained, but if she developed a fever, Ralph was to call him the following day. Lorenzo then called a taxi to transport the Gilman’s to their vehicle and, by 4 o’clock, they were on their way back home.

Blanche was sick throughout the car ride home. That evening, Ralph gave her the tablets as directed, but by morning she had grown worse. Ralph called Dr. Lorenzo. “Call your town doctor,” Lorenzo told him. “Just tell him that she had a miscarriage.”

A local doctor responded to Ralph’s call and wrote out a prescription for Blanche. When her health continued to decline, Ralph had an ambulance take her to Brockton City Hospital on Jan. 30. There, she was given a blood transfusion, but she died at 11 o’clock the following evening.

An autopsy determined that the cause of death had been an infection in the abdominal cavity caused by a sharp instrument passing through the uterine wall.

After questioning Ralph, Brockton police detectives went to the office of Lorenzo, who denied even knowing the Gilmans. Their search of the office, however, resulted in the discovery of a long instrument within his desk, with a hook on one end and prongs on the other. Lorenzo claimed he had no idea what the instrument was and that it had been in the desk when he purchased it. He was arrested, indicted and tried for the death of Blanche Gilman.

Despite Lorenzo testifying that he had never met or talked to the Gilmans, pills and boxes identical to those given to Ralph for his wife had also been discovered in the doctor’s office. The trial resulted in a guilty verdict.

Blanche was buried in Melrose Cemetery in Brockton.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.