Maude Gilbert

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Maude Gilbert's Death a Dramatic End to Life of Quiet Working Girl

The story of Maude Gilbert might have been the story of any number of quite, hard-working, self-dependent business girls in Miami. But with the finding of her body in the Tamiami canal it was made a suddenly and as startlingly dramatic as only O. Henry or de Maupassant could have wished. The mystery of Maude Gilbert is not the mystery of a chain of baffling circumstances. There are no unsolved problems, except the mystery of her death itself. From her life there is little to be learned except that she was as normal as thousands of others.

Nineteen months ago Maude Gilbert first came to Miami from Connecticut and took a position with the Southern Utilities company. She was always a dependable worker, with nothing to make her especially noticed. For the last two or three weeks she has lived in a little house in the rear of that occupied by her landlady, Mrs. E. B. Trexler, at 29 N. W. Third street. It was a dusty street and the grass grows in straggly patches before the grey frame house. The little house in the backyard, where Maude Gilbert engaged a room, has five empty rooms and another occupied by Mrs. Dusinbury. It is a bare little room, with only a bed and a bureau and Maude Gilbert's trunk. They were going shopping in a day or two, Maude and Mrs. Dusinbury, to buy bright cretonne curtains for the windows and cushions to make it more attractive.

"I can hardly believe all this has happened to her," said Mrs. Trexler. "She was always so quiet and nice. She was never out late, but always came in early in the evening. She never went around with any men that we know of and she never hand any come to call on her. She was a good girl, good and quiet. That's why I didn't know that she hadn't come in last night. I was going to tell her to go downtown and buy her own curtains and then Mrs. Dusinbury said to me. 'Why, Maude didn't come in last night. Her bed wasn't slept in.' And that's the first we knew of it."

Nothing about Maude seems in any way to point to anything like indiscretion on her part. From the pitiful heap of clothing in the sheriff's office, she had to skimp and scrape to make things do. The ribbons on her underthings are faded and the crepe-de-chine is neatly darned in places. The narrow lace and ribbon, so dear to the heart of any girl, is obviously not of the expensive variety. And of the dresses hanging in her room, not one is over-elaborate or in any way indicative of expensive tastes. What ever drama there existed in Maude Gilbert's life - and there must have been - was so quietly concealed, maintained so far beneath the surface, that neither her landlady, nor her neighbors, nor the people with whom she worked had any inkling of it.