That's not Cooley
This week's paper has a not quite murder mystery from the turn of the century and a recap of last week's two Board of Police Commissioners meetings
Shot twice in the chest, but by who?
by Katy Jean
Gertrude Cooley was born Sadie Gertrude Bezanson September 3, 1891 in Mill Cove, Lunenburg County.
She had the usual upbringing of a rural Nova Scotian, with trips around St. Margarets Bay to Halifax to visit family. And by the time she was 17 she had moved to Halifax permanently, living at 94 Dresden Row, near present day Pete’s Frootique.
The year was 1909.
Gertrude’s cousin, Lydia Cooley, lived close by with her husband and seven children at the YMCA, where Sutton Place Hotel is today. Lydia worked in the YMCA kitchen and her husband, William was the building’s caretaker.
On March 30 of 1909, Lydia died by ingesting carbolic acid while her children slept, just three days after her 38th birthday.
On September 14, 1909, just days after Gertrude turned 18, and six months after the death of her cousin Lydia, Gertrude married her cousin’s widower William.
He was 23 years her senior.
By the time the two married, Lydia’s infant child Dorothy had passed away in a heatwave.
Her oldest son, Leonard, who was just two years younger than Gertrude, had joined the military and moved in with family at the corner of Jacob and Grafton. Five children remained with William and newly 18-year-old Gertrude.
And Gertrude wanted nothing to do with any of her cousin’s kids.
William sent the remaining children, four girls and a boy, within a year of their mother’s untimely death, to Saint Paul’s Alms House of Industry for Girls. The children were adopted to various families in America, mostly to Massachusetts. By 1910 Gertrude and William lived at 210 Windsor Street, which would have been across from Pilcher’s Flowers.
