My new column is about an Alaska pioneering physician who did great things but was accused and acquitted of heinous acts with children.
Alaska’s Pioneering Doctor Mahlon Freeborn Hall
By Hank Nuwer
While miners aplenty lived in Alaska during the early years of the twentieth century, physicians were rare. Thus, their names were known to one and all in the Interior
Dr. Mahlon Freeborn Hall was as well known for legal troubles as he was for his skill in delivering babies.
Hall was born in North Berwick, Maine, on November 29, 1864. After receiving his diploma from Bowdoin Medical College, he interned at Bellevue Medical College in New York.
Hall married Angeline Lamper Pierce on June 30, 1891, in a packed Unitarian church in suburban Boston.
Early in their marriage, they were blessed with a boy named Bryant and a daughter named Dorothy.
Dr. Hall threw himself into the Skagway community when not ministering to patients. He acted in community theater, joined a local pioneer club, joined the Knights of Pythias and the Masons, and showed himself to be a first-rate marksman in shooting exhibitions.
In addition to a private practice, he was the company physician for the White Pass and Yukon Railway Companies.
Dr. Hall and his wife often lived apart at the turn of the century but kept in touch with posts that she occasionally shared with The Daily Alaskan in Skagway.
In the fall of 1903, Dr. Hall elected to spend the winter practicing in the boom town of Fairbanks while Mrs. Hall remained behind with their daughter in Skagway.
The son later said he believed he was the only child in town that winter as miners descended upon Pedro Creek
In 1905, Hall treated a man accused of being a highway robber. When the doctor refused to give authorities the name or access to his patient, he was arrested for contempt, as was a Skagway newspaper editor who may have regarded the man as a source to protect.
After Hall cooperated with authorities, the complaint went away. Editor Sidney D. Charles refused to cooperate and paid a $1 fine.
From 1906 to 1910, Mrs. Hall lived apart from Hall in Boston with relatives as she battled illness. Her daughter attended a school near her.
Dr. Hall and his son lived with her in Boston in 1909. However, Hall’s love for Alaska pulled him back. Her son moved to Cordova with his father.
Upon arrival, Hall treated a Mrs. Howard Curtis who Hall said had ended her pregnancy without medical assistance. She died during or following the operation.
Hall was charged with manslaughter, but U.S. Commissioner Frame dismissed the charge as without merit.
The first Mrs. Hall died at age 40 in 1911. Her death certificate listed gallstones, intestinal blockage, and post-operative shock as the causes.
Then in 1915, Dr. Hall was arrested for sexual assault after a nine-year-old schoolgirl and daughter of a Finnish-Russian immigrant accused him of molesting her. (Accuser names commonly were printed in newspapers then, but my policy is not to reveal the names).
The alleged crime took place on September 24, 1914. The news stunned all Alaska. Dr Hall, not even six months earlier, married an attractive, well-educated bride named Cecilia Virginia Stroup, who at 24 was some 30 years younger than the groom.
They resided at the doctor’s new home on Cushman Street.
Lead attorney Thomas (Tom) Marquam questioned the child witness and brought out defense witnesses in rebuttal.
The second Mrs. Hall sat in the courtroom all through the trial to show her support.
The jury in the court of Judge Charles Bunnell reached a verdict after a hot supper in a mere 37 minutes on the evening of April 22, 1915, in a Fairbanks courtroom. `
Marquam appealed on grounds that the court had allowed inadmissible evidence.
Attorney Leroy Tozier next represented Dr. Hall. After the case dragged on two years, another jury trial resulted in a not-guilty verdict on April 9, 1917. There had been insufficient evidence for the conviction to stand.
A second elementary school girl also accused the doctor of felonious conduct she said occurred in either 1913 or 1914, but although the charges tarnished Hall’s reputation even more, there appears to have been insufficient evidence to go to trial.
Exonerated, he was recommended by Brigadier General Wilds P. Richardson to assume new duties attending workers with the Road Commission.
Dr. Hall also continued to deliver many new babies in the Interior. He delivered the future Alaska Gov. Mike Stepovich on March 12, 1919.
Several newspapers praised Dr. Hall’s fight to save lives in Nenana during the deadly influenza break of 1920.
He was credited in Fairbanks with establishing St. Matthews’s and St. Joseph’s Hospitals.
In 1922, Hall moved to California. He died at age 93 in a San Bernadino hospital on February 4, 1958.
Both children survived him. Daughter Dorothy was the wife of Alley Hawkes of Windham Center, Maine.
Bryant Hall worked as a civil engineer for the city of San Francisco. A veteran of World War One, he retired to Tulare, California, and died at age 89 in 1983.
The second Mrs. Hall died at 94 on October 27, 1983, in Los Alamitos, California. Her obituary said she possessed an earned master’s degree and taught in Fontana and San Bernardino elementary schools.