Week 9 of 2025's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge is "Family Secret." I'm not sure whether or not this was a family secret, but when I contacted my dad's 2nd cousin -- the grandson of Lena Delia and Leo, he had no idea any of this happened.
Lena Delia Laberge, the eldest Laberge daughter, embarked on a rocky road to love which very nearly got her killed. She had an affair with a married man.
Out of all the Laberge daughters, Delia, who later adopted the name Lena, probably had it the hardest. As the eldest daughter of the Laberge clan, she was in the bittersweet position of remembering the fleeting good times of her parents’ honeymoon years, but old enough to understand her father’s alcoholism and its impact on the family. Some of her younger siblings, who were eventually sent to live with other families, didn’t remember the hunger pains from not having enough to eat, nor did they experience the shame of walking barefoot through the snow to beg neighbors for coal to heat their home, but she did. It’s not surprising given such an unstable homelife that she and her brother Peter had trouble with the law -- it’s surprising more of them didn’t.
In 1909, the 21-year-old fell in love with Leo Richardson, a married 25-year-old father of two. It’s unclear how they met or when their affair began, but they carried on long enough that Leo’s wife noticed. As reported on page 2 of the July 11, 1901’s Providence Journal, “On complaint of the wife of Richardson, Lieut. Sweet and another officer took both of the parties out of a local lodging house.” They were arraigned on July 10, 1909 in Providence County Court and charged with adultery. Delia, who was already on probation for pleading guilty to a “disorderly persons” charge back in June was sentenced to five months in prison. Leo was sentenced to eleven months.
The state prison in Providence was outdated and so overcrowded that an old piggery was converted into housing for some of the inmates. One well on the premises was shut down a few years prior due to excessive sewage contamination, and the pond from which they cut their ice was filled with runoff from a nearby compost heap and seepage from the stables. It was a bleak place.
In a spot of luck, Delia was assigned to work in the officers’ kitchen as a dishwasher. It was a plumb position – not as taxing as working in the prisoners’ kitchen or the laundry, and she had access to better food. Under normal circumstances, it was one of the safest places to work in the prison, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
Two weeks after Delia began her sentence, a typhoid outbreak hit the prison. The life-threatening bacterial infection is usually spread through contaminated food or water, and causes flu-like symptoms and a rash, but complications can include lung problems, gastrointestinal bleeding and perforations, and meningitis. All but two of the officers on staff were infected, and roughly an equal number of prisoners were as well. Investigators were unable to pinpoint the cause of the outbreak, but one common factor may have been the food. As reported in the article “Fighting Typhoid at the State Prison” published in the Providence Sunday Journal on October 10, 1901, many of the prisoners who were infected either worked in the officers’ kitchen or resided in Annex 2, the old piggery, and were given scraps from the kitchen. 1/3 of the infected officers and 1/5 of the infected prisoners died. Health investigators found the higher rate of officer deaths puzzling as they were sent to the state hospital for treatment while the prisoners received inferior care at the hospital connected to the state’s almshouse. Delia was sent there on August 27 when she first exhibited symptoms. She made a full recovery and presumably returned to prison to finish out the remainder of her 5-month sentence.
When Florence Richardson had Leo arrested, she was angry and had every right to be, however, sending her husband to prison for nearly a year had financial implications for her and her two young daughters. In April 1910, she appealed to the governor and urged him to pardon Leo so he could return home to support her and their children. Though Leo was in prison longer than Delia, it does seem a bit unfair that he was pardoned, and she wasn’t.
Now you’d think after being publicly shamed in the newspaper, imprisoned for several months, and Delia’s near-death experience, their passion would have quelled, but Leo and Delia still had feelings for one another. Maybe they tried to stay apart. Perhaps Leo tried to rekindle his marriage to Florence, but two months after he was released and pardoned, their youngest child, 3-year-old Ruth died. Was it the death of his child that drove him back into Delia’s arms, or had he never left them? Despite knowing the consequences, their affair continued for years.
Five years later, Delia and Leo (who was still married) moved to Portland, Maine. Delia was pregnant, which made their affair impossible to hide any longer, if they were in fact trying to hide it. Maine was a safe place to land. One of Delia’s younger sisters, Blanche, was engaged to a man in nearby Westbrook, but didn’t know anyone else in the area. The move benefited both sisters because they had each other. When Delia gave birth to her only child on February 11, 1915, she named her daughter Irene Blanche Richardson in honor of her sister.
Irene was nearly a year old before Florence filed for divorce from Leo. It’s unclear whether she knew about the baby or just grew tired of waiting for her husband to return home. She was granted an uncontested divorce on January 5, 1916 for “willful desertion and neglect to provide.”
Leo and Delia tied the knot in Manhattan, New York on September 20, 1919, over ten years after their affair began. This photo of the two of them and Irene was taken shortly after their wedding, around 1919 or 1920. If you look carefully, you can just make out a wedding ring on Delia’s finger. They moved back to Rhode Island sometime between 1922-1924 and Leo opened a successful woodturning company. According to their grandson, Leo moved in with a girlfriend and left Delia after Irene grew up, though they never divorced and he continued to support her financially.
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