Skip to content 
She spent the remaining 12 years of her life there, mostly unconscious, staring at a photograph she kept in her room. According to asylum records, it was a portrait of her two daughters in white, holding hands. Helen now examined the photograph. Robert Davies sold the house on Beacon Street in September 1895.
He moved to New York and tried to rebuild his life. He remarried in 1899, but the marriage was short-lived. His second wife left him, citing an obsession with the dead. Robert died of heart failure in 1904, at the age of 49. He mentioned his first family only briefly in his obituary, after his daughters, Lily and Rose, and his first wife, Ellaner, preceded him in death.
But the photograph’s journey didn’t end there. Helen followed its owner for decades. After Eleanor’s death in 1907, her meager possessions passed into the hands of her sister, Margaret Hartwell, who had been separated from her while she was still alive. Margaret glanced at the photograph and immediately understood what it depicted.
That’s what she wrote in her diary. Ellaner kept that photo in her room in the psychiatric hospital for 12 years. She stared at it for hours, whispering to her daughters. Now I understand why. Lily lives in the photo, but Rose doesn’t. Eleanor recalled the moment when she was left with only one daughter, and the moment when she tried to pretend she had both.
It’s the cruelest consolation. I can’t keep it. It’s too painful, but I can’t destroy it. It’s all that’s left of those poor children. Margaret kept the photo in her suitcase, where it remained for 50 years, until her death in 1957. Her daughter Catherine inherited it and hid it, never showing it to anyone.
Catherine died in 1998, and the photo passed to her 73-year-old son, James Hartwell. James finally sent it to the historical society in 2021. Helen managed to track it down in the genealogical records and call him. “I’m 94,” James said in a weak but clear voice.
My mother told me about this photo when I was little. She said it was a curse, not magic, but love. She said it showed me what love looks like when you refuse to let go. Even when letting go is the only grace you have left. I’ve carried this photo with me for 23 years, ever since my mother died. Now I’m dying. Of cancer.
I don’t want my children to inherit this burden. Let history remember. Let someone else remember these girls. She died two weeks after sending the photo. Her obituary made no mention of the Davy sisters or the photo. Dr. Helen Foster presented her findings to the Boston Historical Society board in April 2021. Reactions were mixed.
Some members felt the photograph should be displayed as an important historical artifact, illustrating Victorian attitudes towards death and childhood. Others felt it was too moving, too personal, and too painful to share publicly. Helen advocated a middle ground. Preserve it, document it, but restrict access. Make it available to researchers, but not as a temporary exhibition.
The tragic history it represented must be respected. The committee agreed. The photo was cataloged, digitally preserved, and placed in the association’s archives. A detailed historical document was created, documenting everything Helen had discovered about the Davies family. But Helen couldn’t get one detail out of her mind: the hidden inscription.
I promised my mother I would hold her hand forever. What promise did Lily make? And when Helen went back to the records and found something she had missed all along, Rose Davies had already been ill for three weeks before she died. According to Dr. Morrison’s notes, during this time Lily refused to come to her sister’s bedside.
In a letter dated May 28, 1895, six days before Rose’s death, Dr. Morrison wrote: “My elder sister, Lily, has come down with scarlet fever, but insists on staying with my younger sister, Rose, despite the danger of her condition getting worse. When I tried to separate them, Lily went into a fit of hysterics. She says she promised her mother she would hold Rose’s hand until things improved. Mrs.”