Catherine Quinn

Pension File: 1141084, 854963
P.O.: Cincinnati, Ohio
Service: nurse at Camp Dennison Hospital
Applied: 1892
Status: Accepted

Another day, another fun story.  Catherine Quinn served as a contract nurse at Camp Dennison Hospital from 1862 to 1865.  She applied for, and was granted, a pension based on that service.  No hitches, no jumping through hoops to prove anything.  The good stuff comes later.
In August, 1898, the Pension Bureau received an anonymous letter from "an old soldier."  He was writing, he said, because the government was being swindled: Catherine Quinn never served as a nurse--in fact, she'd been a washerwoman, and she'd had $2000 in her account when she'd applied for her pension.  Oh, and she was a drunken, abusive person.
Within a month, the Bureau launched a special investigation.  Turns out the "old soldier" wasn't really an old soldier.  His name was William McLusky, and he'd fought with Quinn because she'd refused to give him money.  As pay back, he'd tried to sabotage her pension claim.  As the investigator dug deeper and called in other people to give affidavits, he observed that "all parties who appear in the matter are of very ordinary class hardly entitled in my opinion to be rated even "fair"...they have until recently all been cronies and the seeming cause of their troubles has been the unwillingness of Mrs. Quinn to supply liquid refreshments to the extent they demanded."
This should have been written off as a petty prank, but the purpose of a special investigation is to determine if a nurse did actually serve--essentially, a nurse has to apply again.  The people who testified on Quinn's behalf though were by now dead.  So, the investigator was left with a choice: based on the current evidence, did he rule in favor of Quinn, or listen to the not-so-fair McLusky?
For once, the Bureau did the decent thing, and gave Quinn the benefit of the doubt.  I guess the Bureau does have a bit of a heart after all.