You stand before Edison sanitarium, the final home of Charlotte Mills.
After police abandoned the search for her mother's murderer, Charlotte Mills had seeken refuge in work. Like many young people, she tried her luck in New York City, but could only find clerical or menial work in the financial sector. The opportunity to make an independent living never fully materialized in the wake of Black Tuesday, September 29th, 1929. Haunted by her mother's death, Charlotte's health broke down, and she left the financial sector due to illness. She returned to Middlesex County to live out the last of her days in a nursing home. Charlotte E. Mills died of illness on February 1, 1952, at the age of just 45.
“Definitely, she has identified her hopes, her ideals, with those of her mother. Her mother, she says, once told her: 'Charlotte, my love for Mr. Hall will end sadly.' Perhaps that is why Charlotte wept so bitterly, so helplessly, in the automobile that carried her to her drab home from the State Troopers’ headquarters, after she had been quizzed by Major Kimberling. The odds must seem all against her. Standing there in the doorway for that insensibly passing moment, she had uncannily resembled Eleanor Mills, her mother, dead now for four years. And, like her mother, like daughter. She will try to find her new horizons. She may fail tragically, but she will try.”