In the archive room of the Providence Historical Society, head archivist Dr. Rebecca Hayes opened a donation box labeled simply “estate sale, Wickenden Street. ” Beneath layers of yellowed newspapers, her fingers found something solid wrapped in brown cloth. Inside was a sepia-toned studio portrait.
The photograph showed a family of six—a stern father, his wife seated before him, and four children arranged by height. On the back, in faded ink, was written: “The Donovan Family, Whitmore Photography Studio, March 14th, 1903. ”
The portrait was remarkably preserved. Rebecca cataloged it under her magnifying lamp, noting the texture of the father’s wool suit, the lace on the mother’s collar, and the elaborate full-length mirror with a gilded frame standing to the left of the family.
Then she paused. Something in the mirror’s reflection was wrong. The mirror showed the backs of the family members exactly as it should, but there was another figure as well—a small child, perhaps seven or eight years old, facing the camera directly. That child appeared nowhere else in the photograph.
Rebecca scanned the image and enhanced the reflection on her computer screen. The child was solid, detailed, unmistakable. She checked for signs of double exposure, a common error in 1903 when glass plate negatives required long exposures. There was nothing.
The emulsion was intact, the paper consistent. A child had been reflected in the mirror, but no such child had posed with the Donovan family. She began searching records for the Donovan family. A city directory from 1902 and 1903 listed James Donovan as a shipping clerk at 47 Benefit Street.
In the 1904 directory, the address was vacant. No forwarding information. No death records. The family had simply vanished.
The next morning, Rebecca searched for the Whitmore Photography Studio. Business directories showed it operated at 128 Westminster Street from 1898 to 1903, owned by Ambrose Whitmore. After that, nothing. In the April 2nd, 1903 edition of The Providence Journal, she found a small notice: “Whitmore Photography Studio closed until further notice.
” No explanation. A May 18th article reported the building had been sold, and that Whitmore had departed “for reasons unknown,” leaving behind equipment and furnishings. The timeline was striking. The Donovan portrait was taken March 14th.
Within three weeks, the studio closed. By mid-May, Whitmore was gone. Rebecca visited the building, now a coffee shop with storage above. The owner called Mrs.
Petrova, who had bought the building in 1987. In a dusty corner, beneath a canvas tarp, Mrs. Petrova revealed an ornate full-length mirror in a gilded frame. It was identical to the one in the photograph—every scroll, every decorative element matched.
Mrs. Petrova also led Rebecca to the basement, where three wooden crates marked “Whitmore” held hundreds of glass plate negatives. Rebecca transported the crates to the historical society. As she unwrapped the fragile plates, she found portraits of Providence families, weddings, children with pets.
None were dated after March 1903. Near the bottom of the second crate, she found a plate labeled “Donovan Family, March 14th, 1903. ” She scanned it at the highest resolution, inverted the negative, and enlarged the mirror’s reflection. The child’s features became clear: a girl, about eight years old, with long dark hair and a pale dress, her expression terrified.
In the third crate, Rebecca found an unlabeled plate showing the same studio, empty. In the mirror’s reflection stood a small wooden chair of the kind used to seat children for portraits. Someone had removed the chair before photographing the Donovan family, but the child’s reflection remained. At the city clerk’s office, a clerk named Patricia helped search birth and death records.
They found the four Donovan children: Thomas, born 1897; Margaret, 1895; William, 1894; and Eleanor, 1889. No fifth child appeared in the records, and no deceased Donovan children were listed. The marriage record showed James Donovan and Catherine Murphy married in 1888. But there were no death records for either parent.
They had left Providence without a trace. Then Patricia found an immigration records ledger with a notation from April 1903: the Donovan family had been “relocated under municipal welfare provision to undisclosed location following incident of March 1903. ” The Department of Public Welfare files from that era had been destroyed in the 1938 hurricane, so Rebecca turned to police archives. At the Providence Police Department’s historical collection, a retired officer named Frank Morrison produced an accordion folder marked “sensitive.
” The police reports were dated late March 1903. On March 28th, Officer Patrick Riley had responded to a complaint from neighbors at 47 Benefit Street about disturbing sounds. He found Catherine Donovan in an agitated state, claiming her daughter had been taken. When asked to clarify, she became incoherent, alternating between saying her daughter was missing and insisting she had never had more than four children.
James Donovan was equally distressed. A follow-up report the next day found no evidence of a missing child. Neighbors confirmed the family had four children. Catherine Donovan was examined by a doctor who diagnosed acute nervous exhaustion and possible hysteria.
On March 30th, she produced the Whitmore photograph, claiming it proved her fifth child could be seen in the image. The officer examined it and observed only the four known children. The final report stated that the Donovan family had been relocated to an institution for rest and treatment, with the children placed at St. Vincent’s Home for Children.
The case was considered resolved. But a note from the police chief, dated April 5th, 1903, read: “The Donovan matter is to be considered closed. No further investigation warranted. All reports to be filed as resolved.
Any inquiries to be directed to this office by order of the mayor. ”
Someone had wanted the case buried. At Catholic Charities, Sister Maria found the children’s admissions records. Eleanor, William, Margaret, and Thomas were admitted April 3rd, 1903, and released six weeks later to their maternal uncle, Patrick Murphy, who took them to Boston.
A letter from the Department of Public Welfare stated that James and Catherine Donovan were undergoing treatment at Butler Hospital, Providence’s psychiatric institution. The sisters’ daily log contained notes about the children. Eleanor was withdrawn. William protected the younger ones.
Thomas, aged five, suffered nightmares and called out for “my other sister,” though he could not remember her name. Margaret, aged eight, claimed to see and speak with a sister who did not exist. On April 20th, a nun found Margaret in the chapel speaking to someone the nun could not see. Margaret said she was talking to her sister “who lives in mirrors.
”
At Butler Hospital’s archives, Rebecca found admission records. James and Catherine Donovan had been committed on April 3rd, 1903, diagnosed with shared delusional disorder. Both insisted they had five children, not four, and that their daughter had disappeared into a mirror. They were released in September 1903 and moved to Boston.
James Donovan died in 1918 during the influenza epidemic. Catherine lived until 1941. Neither ever returned to Providence. Rebecca tracked down a descendant, Helen, a great-granddaughter of William Donovan living in Portland, Maine.
Helen brought a small wooden box containing letters, photographs, and a diary belonging to Eleanor Donovan. The pages from March 1903 described the day of the portrait: the family had dressed in their best clothes because their mother insisted they needed a photograph of “all six of us together. ” The diary noted, “but there are only six of us if you count Margaret twice. The Margaret we can touch and the Margaret in the mirrors.
”
Helen then explained the family’s secret. Margaret had been an identical twin, born with a sister named Mary. As babies, Mary died of scarlet fever. Margaret, too young to remember her sister, began seeing Mary’s reflection in mirrors, talking to her, playing with her.
The family convinced themselves it was a child’s imagination. But as Margaret grew older, the entire family began seeing Mary in mirrors—always watching, always present. Terrified, they deliberately left an empty chair out of the family portrait, hoping to keep Mary’s reflection from appearing. She appeared anyway.
When Catherine Donovan saw the photograph, the child staring out from the mirror, she broke down. She remembered Mary, remembered losing her, remembered that there should have been five children. The grief and the impossibility of what they had seen destroyed her. City officials, convinced the family was delusional, separated the children, committed the parents, and erased every trace of Mary’s existence.
Her birth and death records were gone, as if she had never lived. Helen produced one more photograph: two identical baby girls, perhaps six months old, lying on a blanket. On the back was written “Margaret and Mary, May 1895. ” Margaret herself lived a long life, married, and had children, but she never looked in mirrors again if she could help it, and she never allowed another photograph of herself to be taken.
Rebecca returned to Providence with copies of the documents. The mirror from the Whitmore Studio was donated to the historical society and displayed alongside the Donovan portrait with a plaque telling their story. The exhibition opened on a cold March evening, 121 years after the photograph was taken. Visitors stood before the mirror and the portrait, seeing the impossible reflection, understanding at last that the child in the mirror had been real—a daughter, a sister, a twin whose existence had been erased by death and then by bureaucratic convenience.
Mary Donovan had existed. She had been loved. She had been lost.
And in one photograph, in one mirror’s reflection, she had remained visible, waiting for someone to see her, to remember her, to bring her story back into the light.