Historic Pelham Blog Archive
December 28, 2005

350TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION BOOK:  "THOMAS PELL AND THE LEGEND OF THE PELL TREATY OAK" -- $11.95 (PROCEEDS AFTER PRINTING COSTS WILL GO TO BARTOW-PELL MANSION MUSEUM).  CLICK HERE TO BROWSE BEFORE YOU BUY! LEARN MORE.

The Manor Club was the scene of a bizarre mystery that set Pelham tongues wagging in 1913. Newspapers called it the mystery of the "Manor Club Girl". Today's Historic Pelham Blog posting will tell a little of the mystery of the Manor Club Girl.

At about 6:00 p.m. on Monday, February 10, 1913, the secretary of the Manor Club, Henry Day, was passing the clubhouse. This was the old clubhouse of the Manor Club in the Village of Pelham Manor on the site of today's structure located at 1023 Esplanade. (To learn more about the original clubhouse, see the December 13, 2005 posting entitled "The Manor Club's First Clubhouse Built in 1887-1888"). An image of that clubhouse published in 1892 appears immediately below.

Mr. Day found a young girl dressed expensively and lying unconscious on the steps of the Manor Club. She was about seventeen years old and "very pretty". He carried her into the club and called the Chief of Police and an ambulance from New Rochelle Hospital.

Day revived the girl, but she was "unable to tell her name or to explain how she got to the club". She was hysterical and, according to one account, "raved about a limousine automobile and appeared to think that some one was trying to injure her."

Based on some of the things the girl said, police concluded that she was employed by a "motion picture house" and contacted the firm which, in turn, contacted her parents. Police concluded that the young girl had been drugged and thrown from an automobile.

The ambulance took the girl to New Rochelle Hospital where a man and woman claiming to be her parents called for her. According to one account, however, she "apparently recognized neither the man nor the woman who called for her".

The New York Times reported that "hospital authorities satisfied themselves that the couple who called were really the girl's parents". By the next day, she was able to walk and was released into the couple's custody by the hospital.

The mystery of the Manor Club Girl has never been solved. Her name is unknown and authorities did not learn how she came to be unconscious on the clubhouse steps.

Source: Call For Manor Club Girl - Parents Get Her and Guard Identity - She Doesn't Recognize Them, N.Y. Times, Feb. 12, 1913, p. 12.

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posted by Blake A. Bell @ 5:12 AM Comment

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