How Grandfather Went Out to India

Henry Joseph Sommer, M.D., 1893

Mother was proud of her father, Dr. Henry Joseph Sommer, and I grew up hearing about his many accomplishments. One such accomplishment was that, as a young man, Henry has been appointed the American Consul to Bombay, India by President Grover Cleveland. We had several documents relating to this appointment, including Cleveland’s invitation to Grandfather to come to the White House to discuss whether Madras or Bombay would be preferable. Cleveland had agreed to the consular appointment as a favor to Grandfather’s mentor at Jefferson, Dr. William W. Keen. Keen had been part of the medical team assembled by Cleveland’s personal physician in June of 1893 to perform a top-secret surgery on the President to remove a cancerous growth in his soft palate.

            

The strict secrecy surrounding the diagnosis and the necessary surgery was, President Cleveland believed, in the best interest of the nation.  A financial crisis had been brewing since February and was developing into an economic depression.  Cleveland believed knowledge of how seriously ill he was (in 1893, nearly any kind of cancer was regarded as a death sentence) would worsen the depression.

William Williams Keen, M.D.

            

The surgery took place aboard a private yacht on Long Island Sound, and was completely successful. (Actually, there were two surgeries, two weeks apart; the second to repair the damaged hard palate.) A grateful Cleveland, according to Mother, told the doctors that if he could ever do any one of them a favor, they should not hesitate to ask. President Cleveland lived another fifteen years, and succumbed to a heart attack.

            

The secret surgery stayed secret until 1917, when Dr. Keen received permission from Cleveland’s widow to tell the story. Keen recounted the historically and medically important events in The Surgical Operations on President Cleveland in 1893 (George W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, 1917). I was delighted to find on page 48, in Keen’s own words, corroboration of the story I heard from Mother regarding how Grandfather received his consular appointment.

           

Dr. Keen greatly admired President Cleveland as an honest, serious, public servant. In fact, he thought he worked rather too hard and too diligently, and Keen was, so he wrote, reluctant to take the President up on his offer to do a favor. Luckily for Grandfather, he did:       

I never knew any other public man who took the duties of his office more seriously—one might say, so over-conscientiously. Every case that reached him from various courts, civil or military, I have been told, had to have all the evidence presented along with the sentence; and many a midnight hour found him still poring over the documents in the case. Such infinite labor has long been a heavy task for our Presidents. Now it has become a practical impossibility. The President of over one hundred million people should be relieved especially of the huge burden of the appointment of thousands of officeholders in the many department of the Government. The principal and confidential officers, cabinet ministers, judge, members of important commissions, and so on, should be the only presidential appointees. This would give him time and strength to devote to determining the great questions of policy, which the direction of internal affairs, and still more the intricate and often perplexing foreign relations of a great nation, require. His time and strength should not be frittered away by the importunities of applicant and their personal and congressional advocates.

            

Once only did I, myself, transgress this rule, and the time and care he have to this case shamed me. In the autumn of 1893 one of my former medical students [Grandfather graduated from Jefferson in June, 1893] wanted to study tropical diseases. As his means were limited he asked me whether I could obtain for him an appointment as consul at some not too busy place, where there would be leisure for such study. In those days there were no laboratories available for such studies. The work had to be personal and individual.

            

Moreover, there was absolutely no examination for consulships, and the commercial duties represented by our present useful consular reports were often neglected. Accordingly I wrote to Mr. Cleveland, stating the case. Most men in his position would have thought that making the appointment upon the facts as stated in my letter was fully warranted. Not so Mr. Cleveland. He insisted on knowing all about the applicant in detail; and, instead of directing a clerk to write the reply to me, he wrote it himself. When satisfied with the qualifications of the applicant he made the appointment. (pp. 47-48)

Based on Dr. Keen's description of Cleveland's work ethic and personal
attention to detail, it is possible this envelope and the contents
were written by President Cleveland himself. 

The strong opinion William Keen expressed against those seeking presidential favors, and his willingness to do so on Grandfather’s behalf, show that this eminent surgeon held Grandfather both personally and professionally in high esteem. President Cleveland’s response to Dr. Keen’s appeal shows his respect for Keen, and the depth of his gratitude. Grandfather met with President Cleveland in mid-October, and received his appointment as United State Consul to Bombay on 18 November 1893. By March 1894, he was settled into his apartments in Bombay where he remained until illness forced him to resign his post and return to the United States.

State Department document confirming the
appointment of Henry J. Sommer as U.S.
Consul at Bombay, India, November 18, 1893

After his return to the United States, Grandfather briefly went into private practice, before becoming a pathologist at the State Hospital at Norristown, Pennsylvania.  In 1908, he became the superintendent of the Blair County Hospital for the Insane in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, a position he held until his death in 1937. Superintendent Sommer was often asked to lecture on a variety of topics, one of them being what he learned when he went out to India. (His penciled lecture notes are part of my collection of family documents.)