A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [44]
Level, forty-three, liked to boast that he had never attended a day of school in his life. Born in Kentucky in 1833, he had moved to Buffalo in 1852 and, at the age of nineteen, went into the flour and feed business. He later opened his livery and, during the Civil War, signed up as a field agent for the Bureau of Military Information, the precursor agency of the Secret Service. Following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Level was one of the bodyguards selected to escort the body across the United States for burial in Springfield. At war’s end, Level returned to Buffalo and became a private detective. He had an effortless gift for making friends and telling amusing stories. Not surprisingly, he drifted into politics.
Level listened to Cleveland, but was wary. He let Cleveland know that being Overseer of the Poor gave him no right to remove any minor from his mother without a court order. Cleveland took a law book from Level’s shelf and found the section of state law that empowered the Overseer of the Poor to seek custody of a child whose life was in imminent danger. That was good enough for Level, and he signed the necessary papers. Level may not have been a lawyer, but he was perceptive enough to understand that Cleveland wanted to avoid the “attendant publicity” that might come his way should Maria file a civil lawsuit.
Sometime in July, Cleveland received information that Maria was back on East Genesee Street, and Oscar was with her. He ordered Detective Watts and Officer Curtin to return to Maria’s apartment. Ominously, a third man joined them—Dr. James E. King, the obstetrician who had delivered baby Oscar.
The three men arrived at Maria’s building in two hired carriages on the night of July 10, 1876. Curtin waited outside while Watts and Dr. King strode up the flight of stairs. Detective Watts “surreptitiously” broke into the apartment and, with Dr. King, found Oscar playing on the floor. Maria, stunned to see them there, particularly the “evil” Dr. King, picked up her son, and a violent struggle ensued. Maria was “forcibly seized” and Oscar “torn” from her arms. Maria, “stubborn and resistant,” was “violently dragged” down the staircase and hauled into the waiting carriage.
Roused by Maria’s “shrieks . . . and the heartrending cries of her baby,” Mrs. Baker and some of the other neighbors emerged to investigate the commotion. What they saw happened so swiftly, and in the dead of night, that it left them in a state of disbelief. Had they witnessed a kidnapping? Or was it some lawful arrest by the police? As a reporter wrote eight years later, “The work of abduction was so brutally and speedily done by Cleveland’s hired men that they got their victim off before the people got any notion of what the unusual proceedings meant.”
Watts would later defend his role in Maria’s seizure, claiming that when he broke into her apartment, evidence that Oscar was being neglected was “not lacking.” He asserted that Maria had been drinking that evening, and when she was informed that he and Dr. King were not leaving without Oscar, she screamed out, “I’d rather kill the child than have it snatched from me.”
“It was a hell of a time,” the detective recounted, and it wasn’t something he had bargained for. He said that overpowering Maria had taken all of his nerve and physical strength. For their work this night, Cleveland paid Watts and Curtin the sum of $50.
With the hired driver at the reins, the carriage bearing Maria Halpin and the two detectives drove off. Maria, having no idea where she was being taken, was hysterical.
Dr. King, who was left in charge of Oscar Folsom Cleveland, climbed into the remaining carriage with the child and told the driver to take them to 403 Virginia Street.
Less than an hour later, when