It is likely that her attorney, O’Neill, prevailed on her to drop it. The courts had found no difficulty depriving her of her freedom, and it was unlikely in the extreme that they would award her a quick fifty thousand for her pain and suffering. It’s not too hard to imagine how unhappy she was. After working her way up to cook, to find herself laboring as a lowly laundress must have been embittering. She had been the boss, in charge of kitchens in fine homes. Now she was just another anonymous drone, doing unskilled labor with unskilled laborers and for half the money. She’d been publicly reviled, nicknamed with an unforgettable moniker, locked up, poked, prodded, examined, interviewed, depicted in photos and illustrations, gossiped about, teased – and now was back at the bottom. Forty-one years old and a laundress in an outer borough, indistinguishable from younger, stupider, less experienced girls who might well have been just off the boat. What gets you through a soul-destroying workday in a job like that – and in such humbling, even humiliating, circumstances?
