Helen Potts met Carlyle Harris in the summer of 1889 through mutual friends while he was vacationing on the Jersey Shore in Ocean Grove, where Helen lived with her family, per Pearson’s Magazine. After Helen’s family moved to Manhattan, Harris began to court Helen, which her mother tried to prevent since her daughter was still in her teens. On February 7, 1890, under the pretense of going to visit the New York Stock Exchange, Helen and Harris were wed at City Hall under assumed names, unbeknownst to either of their families, according to Murder by Gaslight.
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Soon, Helen became pregnant and Harris performed a botched abortion on his new wife who nearly died. She went to an uncle in Pennsylvania, a doctor who had to induce labor of the dead fetus. It was then that Helen’s mother learned of the secret marriage, according to “The trial of Carlyle W. Harris for poisoning his wife, Helen Potts, at New York.”
