A Vampire foundling. A merciful priest. A child abandoned by his own.
When Dr. Alders Grootenshilf, his wife Aidena and their “Maidservant” Beatka Kosinski set sail from Bristol, England to the Colonial American City of New York, it was a disappearing act. After getting too much “attention” for his avant-garde “surgical techniques” in London, he probably would have preferred returning to his native Holland – but Dr. Grootenshilf had already worn out his welcome there, too. Where would a Dutchman go in 1775 to ply his unique medical skills but to a city bustling with other Dutchmen?
Where else, indeed, but to New York – or, at least until 1664 – New Amsterdam.
In 1609 Henry Hudson, an English Captain in the service of the Dutch East India Company, was searching for the fabled “Northwest Passage” to Asia. He sailed up the (now) Hudson River and ultimately established a trading post called “Fort Nassau” in 1617 in an area he christened “Neu Netherlands”. In 1624, Fort Nassau was abandoned and another trading outpost – “Fort Oranje” was established on land that would later be called Albany. Also in 1624, the first Dutch settlers started to arrive on what is now Governor’s Island in New York Harbor. In 1626, Peter Schaghen, official liaison between the Dutch Government in Europe and the Dutch West Indian Company confirmed in writing the Company’s purchase of Manhattan Island from the Lenape Indians for 60 Dutch Guilders (about $1,143.00 US in today’s currency). His account was probably accurate. The man who negotiated the purchase, Peter Minuit, would later boast that his salesmanship skills closed the deal for the equivalent of $24.00 US worth of trinkets. Thereafter, rumors would spread that the Dutch swindled the Indians, buying Manhattan for mere “wampum”.
Dutch settlers were already pushing their way onto the Southern tip of Manhattan by 1625 for practical reasons. This strategic location was intended as a defensive bullwark to protect fur trade operations of the Dutch West Indian Company. It was here “Batteries” of cannon were situated, hence it became known as “The Battery”. In 1652 the Settlement of “Neu Amsterdam” was formally established on the Island of Manhattan.
The “Second Anglo-Dutch War” (1664 -1667) changed everything. England took over Manhattan in 1664 after surrounding it with warships and renamed it “New York” after the Duke of York (later King James II). So overwhelming was the English Naval fleet anchored off the island, Dutch Governor-General Petrus Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam without firing a shot. According to the Treaty of Breda in 1667, England received all the Dutch Colonies in North American in exchange for the Dutch taking possession of valuable Spice Islands in the East Indies. By then, however, thousands of “Hollanders” had immigrated to New York. Names like Vorhees, Bleecker, Steenwijk, Berkenbosch, Nijenhuis, Kuiper, DeGroot, Hengeveld, Meerdink – were everywhere. These original “Hollanders” also did quite well financially owing to their strong merchant backgrounds and education.
By the Ninteenth Century, these established “Hollanders” of New York would be known by a new name: Knickerbockers. By the Twentieth Century, Knickerbockers would be considered the pedigreed upper class of Manhattan Island. They owned the best real estate and controlled most of the powerful politicians.
By the time the English had assumed control in 1664, the forty-year attempt by Holland to establish a “Neu Netherland” Colony in North America had effectively come to an end. England, however, kept and nurtured much of what the Dutch created in America. They respected enormous land claims and titles in the Hudson Valley stretching as far as Albany. The English also maintained the Dutch “Patroon” system of wealthy landowners keeping their farmers in virtual servitude. Names like Van Rensselaer, Stuyvesant, Van der Donck and Schuyler became synonymous with royalty. Entire swaths of New York were fiefdoms of Dutch settlers – modern day Bronx was the farm of Jonas Bronck. The Boswijk farm later became Bushwick. The Breukelen family owned most of what today is Brooklyn. The “Broad Road” or “Breede Wegh” through Manhattan was later renamed “Broadway”. The English were gratious in their respect of Dutch prerogatives and legal administration. New York became a teeming, sucessful port – a Crown Jewel of English Colonial trade. And the Knickerbockers shared in all this English wealth and good fortune adding their own Dutch East India Company profits and business connections to the ledger.
So successful was this New York experience that when the American Revolution started, many “New Yorkers” – calling themselves “Tories” – didn’t exactly want to rock the boat. They had a good thing going. They had no animosity towards King George III. All the way down the New Jersey coast trade and smuggling was making merchants obscenely rich. Political hot-heads who called for “Liberty” were seen as cranks and troublemakers. Towards the end the Revolutionary War, however, New Yorkers had to grin and bear the inevitability of “Independence” from England. When the red-coated English soldiers – called Lobsterbacks by the colonial militia – left the Island on “Evacuation Day”, November 25, 1783, a new society was already taking shape.
The new movers and shakers were men like Alexander Hamilton, Jonathan Dayton. James Madison and Aaron Burr – guys who’d fought the British and now claimed their place in the sun. They were the go-to lawyers and businessmen whose connections could make things happen. The old Knickerbockers already enjoyed status and wealth. English sympathizing “Tories” were being relentlessly hounded out of their property and leaving for Canada. But to the majority of “Dutchmen” who populated Manhattan, it was business as usual.
This was the new world Dr. Anders Grootenshilf and his wife settled into. His medical skills were sought after and he gradually assumed the personna of an esteemed Church Elder and surgeon to his increasingly wealthy clientelle. And there was one area in which he excelled: female anatomy. Well-heeled matrons and merchant’s wives packed his waiting room to cure them of all manner of bloody eruptions, incontinence, fistulas, genital cysts and warts, yeast-poxes and “the drips”. Hushed female voices also discussed his “other” skills – helping wealthy parents of precocious female children and young ladies who got themselves “in trouble”. Doctor Grootenshif found Manhattan streets paved with gold – and also enjoyed a secret life, apart from Medical practice. He developed quite the reputation as a “Sporting Gentleman” at the gaming tables of discrete establishments frequented by men of wealth and privilege. It would be his ruin.
On September 27, 1785 the body of a young girl was found dumped in a waste pit seven blocks from Broadway along the East River. It was near the the earthen wall that was built by Dutch settlers in 1653 to repel an expected English invasion. The dirt road that followed along side this earthen bullwark was later named “Wall Street”. The young girl was dressed in fine clothes and shoes – clearly she was no vagrant – and showed signs of “having been surgically cut in her female parts”. A botched abortion was immediately suspected as cause of death. A passing teamster who delivered beer and ales to an uptown public house frequented by lawyers told the city “Health Inspector” who was fishing the dead woman out of the garbage that he’d heard a rich attorney was searching for his lost daughter. He wondered out loud if there was a reward for information. One thing led to another.
A few days thereafter, a Manhattan lawyer named Flanders Wynant contacted city officials about his missing sixteen year old daughter, Felicity Wynant. Counsellor Wynant was escorted by another lawyer who officials bent over backwards to accomodate. Apparently, Flanders Wynant’s wife was Angelica Barton Prevost – the sister of Lady Theodosia Barton Prevost, wife of Aaron Burr, Esq. The dead girl, Felicity Wynant, was Aaron Burr’s neice. Aaron Burr – perhaps the preeminent Barrister in Manhattan at this time – demanded answers and justice. City “Health Inspectors” immediately knew that this was one death that was going to be investigated. Somebody was going to hang for this homicide.
In 1785 Manhattan had no police. Official “Constables” were usually paid a fee by aggrieved persons who’d been the victims of crime to find the miscreant who was responsible. Lawyer Wynant – and Aaron Burr, Esq. – had the money to get Constables motivated and start the ball rolling. Aaron Burr’s wife Theodosia suffered from endless “female troubles” (she would later die in 1794 from uterine cancer) and she accordingly urged authorities to investigate the legions of “quacks and charlatans who victimized women with deceitful nostrums and painful excavations” in Manhattan. Outraged “society women” eventually revealed the name of a well known Doctor who offered abortion services – for the right price – to the “better” classes of Nickerbocker females. He was expensive, but discrete. He had been a “Royal Physician” to “Catherine the Great” and was renowned in his native Holland.
Dr. Alders Grootenshilf.
A score of medical talent testified before Jonas Templeton, Chief Judicial Magistrate of the Manhattan Assize Court on December 29, 1785, the day Dr. Grootenshilf was tried. Mrs. Gilda Veldboom delivered the coup de grace whe she told Judge Templeton that she’d told Felicity Wynant’s mother, Angelica Barton Wynant (nee Prevost), about Dr. Grootenshilf’s “talents” when “girls got themselves into trouble”. Felicity’s Mother, Angelica, broke down on the witness stand and had to be carried from the court room – though not before, through sobs and wrenching emotional body spasms – she admitted telling her daughter about Dr. Grootenshilf and giving her “coins of Spanish silver” with which to pay him.
Dr. Grootenshilf did not testify against himself – but the Jury of his “Peers” (all male) lost no time convicting him to death by hanging . Abortion in Colonial America was a capital offense that called for the Death Penalty. When Judge Templeton announced the verdict he donned a customary black “hood” on his head and raised his voice when he finished with “…….and may God have mercy on your soul”.
Convicted Criminal Abortionist Alders Grootenshilf was remanded to “The Bridewell”, a dark and forbidding municipal prison in Manhattan constructed in 1768. He was to be hanged within a “fortnight”. The “place of execution” was to be the original Dutch “Het Marckvelt Capske” – or “execution shoreline” on Whitehall Street, just South of Water and State Streets today. In European tradition, hangings always were held at the shore line so that gulls could pick at the corpse and tear pieces from it. The dead man’s eyes were the first to go.
Dr. Grootenshilf spent the first week of his forteen day (“fortnight”) wait at The Bridewell alone, covered with lice and damp fungus in his decrepit cell, vomiting the inedible food guards brought him into the same wooden bucket he used to pee and shit. Then, six days before his execution day, he had visitors.
Although he was a Dutch Methodist, a Jesuit Priest named Father Hans Steinmeyer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and another man foppishly dressed in expensive clothes – cutaway waist coat, polished buckle shoes, leggings and high-laced collar blouse – were ushered into his cell by a guard.
The extravagant guest walked with a long polished staff, topped by a silver globe and fine fittings. He had pallid, pasty facial skin with fish-like eyes, almost non-existant ears (obscured by a tight, powdered wig) and a slight mouth. His teeth seemed gray and protruded in his gumbs. The man’s hands were like boney claws and his fingernails were sharpened into longish talons. Father Steinmeyer introduced him.
“Dr. Grootenshilf, it is my honour to present Monsieur Comte de la Mer, Aziel Pindar of Auverge, France. Monsieur Comte took his medical degrees at the University of Gottingen in Germany.”
The prisoner was disinclined to extend his hand so he just gestured with it.
Father Steinmeyer continued speaking while the Comte de la Mer stood ramrod straight, holding a lace handkercheif to his mouth to stifle to foul atmosphere.
“Dr. Grootenshilf, I am a confidente of Jesuit Father Jean-Francois Moulin at St. Matthews Catholic Mission House in Elizabethtowne, New Jersey. We are both Jesuits and old friends – and we have no secrets. I presume you understand my meaning. In fact, his sister – Jacqueline Kneiphauser – is also a friend. They told us you have…..accomplished the impossible.
Pray excuse my speaking in such a direct manner – but time is of the essence. A death sentence bears down upon you. My colleague and I are privy to certain information that, we hope, motivates you to agree to an arrangement…… You see, Sir, we are aware of your gambling debts. Your exquisite lodgings on the Park Avenue are being leased to other tenants as we speak. Your beloved wife, Aidena, will soon be on the street. When you die, Sir, your Estate will most certainly be bereft of assets. In short, Doctor…….your wife’s future is one of abject penury. Monsieur Comte de la Mer and I may be able to help you.
Steinmeyer spoke softly so any nearby guards couldn’t eavesdrop. He continued.
“We have powerful friends who would be grateful for information that you, apparently, are the only one who can supply…….information of a medical nature. An avant garde surgical technique that you have…..shall we say…...perfected. My colleague and I wish to more fully understand how you kept the child Alaric alive inside Beatka Kossinski’s womb until he was extracted by the knife…………”
Grootenshilf stared dumbfounded at the people before him. The full weight of his misery already bore down on his body like a crushing stone. This was the final straw. He thought of his darling Aidena – his heart breaking -knowing full well the life he was abandoning her to. He had no alternatives, no other choice to spare his wife further suffering. His voice was resolute.
“So…..you both want to know how a viable foetus and amniotic sack were taken from a dying Vampyre mother and transferred to a human womb so that the child could grow to term…..and then be extracted in Cesarean fashion?
If my Aidena can be provided for after my demise……I will tell all. I will divulge the process I invented in St. Petersburg, Russia.
My reputation as the Premier surgeon of female anatomy was well known in the medical circles of the Imperial Court of Catherine the Great. It wasn’t the first time I had contact with…….Vampyres. They had need of my skills, too……I know full well that they sicken and die in natural course. I never viewed their existance as a simple good versus evil equation. I provided services to them when I was called upon. And they always paid in gold………
BUT KNOW THIS! My surrogacy method is a parasitic process – the female human host must always DIE ! The Vampyre mother’s foetus-bearing amniotic sack is spliced into the human birthing vein to tap into her blood supply……..then her womb and vagina is sewn shut…….and her blood nourishes the foetus until it is cut out. If the splicing is done correctly, human blood will only enter the foetus’ mouth – not mix with the Vampyre’s bluish-green blood. Vampyres have different minerals in their blood than humans – I believe Vampyre blood is copper-based. By my method, the Vampyre foetus consumes human blood as nourishment and as a medium to transfer oxygen ONLY. Human blood is the fluid in which the foetus is suspended – BUT the Vampyre foetus does but not mix human blood with it’s own. It is a delicate process. BE FOREWARNED!
The surrogate human woman must be ALWAYS be sacrificed……..her womb is the blood chamber, her body the vessel. She becomes a self-contained food machine that sustains the parasitic foetus until it can exist on its own. The Vampyre foetus slowly consumes the life blood of its human host. The host then dies during Cesarean Sectioning. There is no way to save both lives – ONLY the child can live.”
Over the next hour and a half, Grootenshilf filled in more and more details about the operation he performed on Beatka Kosinski – and how she slowly wasted away from blood loss and sepsis. How she was literally eaten from within and descended into convulsions, blindness, brain fever and non-stop hemorrhaging from her eyes, ears – every body orifice. The Doctor vividly recounted stuffing dirty rags in her mouth to stanch her bloody vomit and stop her from screaming in pain before her heart ripped itself to pieces in paroxisms of agony. Ultimately, Grootenshilf had to cut her vocal chords to keep her from raising the alarm of the captain and crew of the H.M.S. Granville.
Doctor Grootenshilf crouched over the floor of the jail cell and used a piece of old charcoal to scrape crude step-by-step diagrams on one of the filthy flagstones of an intricate, layered flap-splice suture configuration that he pioneered to connect the Vampyre mother’s amniotic sac umbillicus to the human female umbilical vein. This was the pipeline to satisfy the hunger of the “parasitic” Vampyre foetus for human blood. He gave precise instructions as to the gauge and origins of sinew that was to be used for suturing. Once this splicing was completed and the human host was “feeding” the Vampire foetus, the human womb and vaginal canal was sewn shut, creating a chrysalis wherein the child was protected and nurtured. This human chrysalis was Dr. Grootenshilf’s miraculous invention.
He’d created a human incubator. But the trick was recognizing the precise moment that Beatka Kosinski’s lungs became so toxic and pustulent with infection that she could no longer oxygenate blood……..when her sepsis threatened to cut off the Vampyre foetus from it’s oxygen source. If such rampaging sepsis migrated through the Vampyric placental filter, the child was doomed. Identifying this precise moment when the Ceasarian Section was to commence was critical.
Yes, Beatka Kosinski was the Vampyric parasite’s host…..little more than a disposable bag of flesh. Condemned to certain death from the start. But she was also a Witch, devoted to the Dark Lord and convinced she was giving birth to the Anti-Christ. Her willingness to die for her Master made the miraculous birth of the Vampyre child, Alaric, possible. A life for a life. She was the perfect candidate for Vampyric surrogacy. A mentally-deranged fanatic. But a healthy fanatic.
Finally, Grootenshilf fell silent. His face looked serene but unrepentant. He showed no remorse.
Monsieur Comte de la Mer, Aziel Pindar, had listened to the wily Dutchman with an almost enraptured visage. He was a medical doctor and Alchemist being lectured by a true Master – a filthy, soon-to-be-executed, murdering Master – but a Master nevertheless. Pindar was visibly impressed. He nodded to Father Steinmeyer that he was satisfied.
Grootenshilf looked at them both and asked one question: “Do we have a deal?”
In return for this unorthodox medical lecture, the Doctor was promised that Aidena Grootenshilf would be provided for. Father Steinmeyer handed Grootenshilf a small scent-bottle containing a potent poppy-based soporific and fatal dose of hemlock that – peacefully – would ease his transition to the hereafter.
“Drink this the night before your execution. Our agents will make good our understanding once we learn you have taken the potion.”
Finally, Monsieur Comte de la Mer, Aziel Pindar, spoke in a gravelly voice.
“The Vampyre child you have entrusted to Jesuit Father Moulin and his sister, Jacqueline Kneiphauser, is now growing into adulthood under the protection and watchful eyes of his race. They have great plans for him. They have great plans for America. You should be proud of your unprecedented achievement. I bid you Adieu, Monsieur.”
Father Steinmeyer and Monsieur Comte then left Grootenshilf’s cell.
Doctor Grootenshilf’s hanging never took place. At the appointed time his lifeless body was discovered in his cell. After miraculously paying her husband’s gambling debts and funeral expenses, Aidena Grootenshilf continued to live in Manhattan for another twenty years. She died from natural causes, leaving almost no Estate whatsoever. Her burial was financed by “friends”. How she’d managed to support herself in the life of ease and gentility that she enjoyed after her penniless husband’s passing remains a mystery.
Copyright, 2023 Jon Croft
Credit graphic scene from
F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, 1922.
joncroft52@yahoo.com
