Title page of "The Misfortunes of Mary Roesly."
Mary Roesly, a young Massachusetts woman, was waiting for a train in 1864: “By a sudden start, as I had just mounted the car platform, I was instantly thrown under the car, and my arm was crushed at the elbow…” (6)
The crushed arm was amputated later that day, but Roesly’s sufferings continued through a series of operations and attempts to relieve pain from the original wound, none of which she found successful. In 1872, Roesly published an account of the events surrounding the injury and the subsequent medical interventions in a short booklet: The Misfortunes of Mary Roesly, or, the Lost Arm.
Presumably advised or thinking for herself that her story might easily be faked — given that the booklet includes no names of physicians (but she does mention being treated at Boston City Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital), photographs, or drawings to allow her story to be verified — Roesly asked her “guardian” to write a brief foreword to the volume: “The subject of this story is known to me personally. …I know Mary Roesly to be a truthful, good girl.” With this foreword, Roesly — and presumably any members of her family who were involved in the production of the story — attempt to disarm those who will say she has concocted a “sob story” for commercial reasons, trading on the actual injuries that took place on the railroad to gain public sympathy and whatever money she might gain from the publication. Henry Williams in the foreword mentions her parents as being “straitened in their means,” she only mentions her “desire to get some assistance, independent of my parents.” (10)
The Misfortunes is a brief volumes, not even two dozen pages long. It is interesting to speculate on who Roesly might have imagined buying her story or what audience she imagined herself talking to. Presumably not a medical one, or she would have included the names of her attending physicians, what institutions she had been treated at, or more details about the treatments she had undergone. Had she been written about by a physician from a case study point of view, the tone of the entire publication would be different. As it is, Roesly had, to a certain extent, taken charge of her story.
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