The Rise and Fall of Dr. Carr
Dr. Harry Newton Carr’s life was a tumultuous blend of ambition, scandal, and relentless reinvention. Born in Fairchance, Pennsylvania, on Christmas Day 1890, Carr would go on to achieve professional heights and personal notoriety that spanned continents and courtrooms alike.
Carr began his medical career with promise. After graduating from the Middlesex College of Medicine and Surgery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, around 1918 or 1919, he received the prestigious Oliver Rea Scholarship. He used it to study medical diagnosis, obstetrics, and pediatric diseases in New York City. By the end of 1924, he was awarded a second scholarship for advanced training in ear, nose, and throat surgery at the New York Post-Graduate Hospital and Medical School.
Carr's quest for education continued into 1925, when he closed his Feeding Hills, Massachusetts office and embarked on a whirlwind of study in New York and Europe. He trained at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary for a month and then sailed to Paris aboard the R.M.S. Majestic to attend an international clinic of facial and Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) surgery. He also traveled to Vienna for further specialization in ENT and spent two weeks working in a London hospital before returning to the United States later that year.
Before settling in Southwick, Massachusetts, Carr experienced early personal upheaval. While attending medical school in Los Angeles, he married Elvaretta Wilson, a native of that city, on February 15, 1915. At the time, Carr was struggling financially, working nights as an undertaker, selling shoes, and picking up weekend shifts as a delicatessen clerk to pay his way through medical school. According to courtroom testimony, Elvaretta became disillusioned upon discovering the extent of his poverty. After Carr graduated and prepared to return east to begin his practice, she refused to go. In 1920, a judge granted him a divorce, citing her refusal to relocate. (Elvaretta kept Carr's last name. She became a well-respected doctor.)
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| Dr. Harry Newton Carr (circa 1925) |
Shortly after, Carr’s new life began to take shape. He opened a practice in Southwick in late 1920 and was appointed chairman of the town’s board of health just months later. In June 1921, he became engaged to Emily "Isabel" Root, daughter of prominent Southwick residents Mr. and Mrs. J. Whitney Root. They married on December 31, 1921.
Yet, despite this promising beginning, shadows soon gathered around Carr's professional reputation. In 1924, his name appeared on a Connecticut Medical Board list recommending the revocation of licenses for 132 physicians. His attorney claimed it was a clerical error—but the controversy revealed deeper concerns about the legitimacy of medical credentials at the time.
A grand jury report that accompanied the list sharply criticized the Connecticut Eclectic Examining Board, which had approved many of the licenses in question. The report stated that several of these physicians were unable to identify the symptoms of common and dangerous infectious diseases such as diphtheria, scarlet fever, and smallpox. It also singled out Carr’s alma mater, the Middlesex College of Medicine and Surgery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to the jury, the school did not teach eclectic medicine at all, meaning its graduates were not even eligible for licensure through the eclectic board. The college was described as a “diploma mill,” with disorganized and insufficient instruction that left its graduates ill-prepared for actual medical practice. (At the time, Connecticut was unique as it allowed a field of exploration for licensed providers in various cults and questionable theories, which was not permitted elsewhere in the United States.)
Though Carr maintained his practice for the time being, the seeds of doubt had been sown—and the questions about his qualifications would echo throughout the rest of his turbulent career. However, despite lingering questions about his credentials, Dr. Carr quickly became a familiar and often respected figure in Southwick.
In 1926, Carr survived a dramatic car accident when he attempted to squeeze his vehicle between a fast-moving trolley and a snowbank in Agawam, Massachusetts. The impact knocked parts off the streetcar and left Carr’s car in a snowdrift, barely missing a telegraph pole.
By the end of the decade, trouble mounted. In 1928, he responded to a scarlet fever outbreak in Southwick by inspecting local schools. But that same year, his car collided with a Chevrolet coach shortly after midnight in Feeding Hills Center. He fled the scene, only to be tracked down by police. A judge fined him $200 and handed down a suspended sentence of three months in jail.
Worse incidents followed. In 1929, Dr. Carr was again arrested—this time in Suffield, Connecticut—for reckless driving, evading responsibility after an accident, and violating road rules. He abandoned his car after the crash and fled, allegedly helped by his wife. That same year, he purchased the South Longyard Schoolhouse at auction, only for it to burn down under suspicious circumstances in January 1931. Authorities found footprints in the snow leading to the scene of the fire.
In 1931, Carr's problems escalated further when he was arrested—alongside his brother and a woman—for violating narcotics laws. He had been writing fraudulent prescriptions, allegedly supplying addicts. A druggist tipped off authorities after the woman attempted to fill multiple prescriptions for morphine. Carr was convicted on February 25 and sentenced to three months in the House of Corrections. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts revoked his medical license.
That same year, he was arrested for DUI after an erratic and dangerous car ride through West Springfield, Massachusetts. When an officer tried to stop him, Carr fled, leading to a high-speed chase into neighboring Agawam that ended with him crashing into a utility pole—downing wires and plunging the neighborhood into darkness.
By the mid-1930s, his personal life had also collapsed. In 1935, his wife Isabel divorced him on the grounds of "gross and confirmed habits of intoxication" that began after the death of their three-year-old son in 1927. Carr wasted no time. That same year, he married Mercedes Del Rosal, a woman nearly two decades his junior. On March 18, 1935, they wed and relocated to Florida, where Carr attempted to rebuild his career.
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| Miss Mercedes Del Rosal (circa 1935) |
Even Florida didn’t bring a clean slate.
On April 1, 1936, Tampa police arrested Dr. Carr for driving under the influence following a collision that left a female passenger in the other vehicle permanently injured—she lost her right eye. A judge fined Carr $200. He appealed the ruling.
Just three weeks later, around 4:00 a.m. on April 22, Carr was arrested again, this time for public intoxication.
His legal troubles didn’t end there. Not long after, Carr ran a stop sign and struck another vehicle. He fled the scene before officers could question him.
Carr later filed a petition with the City of Tampa seeking a full pardon. The city denied his request. In the same year, for reasons unclear, Carr also filed a lawsuit against the City of Tampa. By the end of 1936, he had relocated to Miami—perhaps seeking a fresh start, or simply running from the wreckage he had left behind.
On May 29, 1943, Miami police arrested Dr. Carr for driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident. A judge fined him $75 and suspended his driver's license for one year. In October, the case was reopened after Carr presented witnesses claiming he had not been intoxicated. On December 17, a judge dismissed the charge of driving under the influence but upheld charges of reckless driving and leaving the scene of an accident.
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| Dr. Harry Newton Carr |
On June 23, 1944, Miami police arrested Dr. Carr for performing an illegal abortion on a 25-year-old servicewoman earlier that month, on June 10. They also arrested his wife for being an accessory. The case came to light after the woman developed serious complications and had to be hospitalized. However, on January 23, 1945, the judge dismissed the charges against Dr. Carr and his wife. He ruled that the testimony of the complainant was not credible, citing her admission that she had undergone other illegal operations prior to the one performed by Dr. Carr. The military subsequently discharged her from service.
It didn’t stop there. On August 29, 1946, Carr crashed into several passenger vehicles and a truck before fleeing the scene once again. He was fined $100 for drunk driving and $50 for leaving the scene.
Then came another major blow. In 1947, Carr was arrested for performing an illegal abortion on a 17-year-old unmarried girl. Hospital staff notified authorities after the girl showed up with an infection following the procedure.
In 1948, Carr was convicted of performing an illegal abortion on a 16-year-old nurse's aide. He was stripped of his medical license and sentenced to three years in a Florida state prison. Carr appealed the conviction, but on May 10, 1949, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the lower court's decision. Carr appealed again and received a reprieve from the governor. On September 27, the state pardon board denied Carr's request for a full pardon, but they commuted his sentence to one year. (In 1951, the pardon board granted Carr a full pardon.)
In 1952, Carr was arrested again—this time for reckless driving.
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| Isabel (Root) Carr (circa 1930) |
Despite this record, Carr continued practicing medicine, operating largely in the shadows and under scrutiny.
On April 30, 1960, he performed another illegal abortion—this time on a 19-year-old woman who paid him $200 (some accounts say she was 22). The procedure went badly, and the patient was hospitalized for 11 days. Carr was convicted by a six-man jury on February 9, 1961, and sentenced to three years in prison. However, in 1962, the District Court of Appeals granted him a new trial, citing the trial judge’s biased language. Judge George Falk had used the word "abortion" repeatedly without the qualifier “alleged,” potentially prejudicing the jury.
Rather than retry the case, Judge Falk ruled that doing so would violate double jeopardy and dismissed the charges.
But Carr did not stop. On October 28, 1962, he performed yet another abortion, which again led to hospitalization of the patient. Judge Falk sentenced Carr to another three-year prison term. Authorities later traced Carr's abortion activities back to the 1940s, revealing a hidden practice that spanned decades.
Dr. Harry Newton Carr died on May 11, 1965, at his Miami estate—a physician once honored with scholarships and study abroad, later disgraced by criminal convictions, addiction, and a medical license repeatedly stripped from him. His life was a study in contradiction: a dedicated student, a community doctor, a lawbreaker, and a repeat offender. For every courtroom headline, there were quiet stories of families he helped—of wounds stitched, fevers eased, and lives momentarily made better.
Some saw him as a doctor who had lost his way, others as a man trapped by addiction and poor choices. Yet it’s undeniable that Carr continued to heal, even as he continued to harm himself. Even in death, Carr’s legacy is one of caution—and complexity.
Though Dr. Carr was laid to rest in Miami, his name endures in Southwick Cemetery, inscribed on a headstone within the Root family plot—an echo of his earlier life and marriage to Isabel Root.
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Edited Out/Author's Additional Research Notes
Dr. Carr was in his 30s when he married 18-year-old Isabel Root.
Dr. Carr was Southwick's coroner.
Three-year-old Elwin Carr died inside the Carr's Southwick home.
Dr. Carr gave formal lectures on various medical topics.
The lady who lost her eye sued Dr. Carr, but it's unclear what the outcome of the court case was. It may have been settled out of court.
Dr. Carr maintained offices in Soutwick and Feeding Hills at the same time. He later relocated his Feeding Hills practice to Springfield (1926), where he specialized in ENT work and removal of foreign bodies from the lungs. His Southwick office was primarily general/family practice.
In 1937, a man and a woman were arrested in Miami for obtaining fraudulent prescriptions. They went to various doctors, including Dr. Carr. A pharmacist became suspicious and notified police. Dr. Carr (and the other doctors) did not know the drug addict couple.
On January 3, 1940, a counterclaim for the title of firstborn in the greater Miami area in the new year was filed. Dr. Carr claimed that the first baby born in the greater Miami area was born at 2:35 a.m. - Dr. Carr said that the mother was a charity case who was brought to a local hospital where he was attending. His claim stripped the title of firstborn from another baby born at 8:07 a.m.
Dr. Carr relocated his office a lot, especially when he was in Miami.
When authorities suspended Dr. Carr's drivers license he hired a chauffeur.
Most of the abortions took place in Dr. Carr's office. The only reason he got caught was that his patients had complications hours, days, or weeks later and went to a hospital for help.
Dr. Carr just happened to be on or near the scene of several accidents, including the Fatal Ice Train Accident of 1923.
Dr. Carr was a character witness for the defense in a case against a Florida constable who crashed into two parked autos in 1961. The defendant's attorney called three character witnesses, including Dr. Carr, who testified that the defendant rarely drank intoxicating beverages.