"Then she went to the bathroom," Kitto said, "and out came me."
According to family lore, Buffum, a nurse, had helped demonstrate the first human incubator at the 1915 World's Fair in San Francisco. That might explain what happened next:
Buffum covered baby Eleanor in cooking oil, wrapped her in a blanket, and put her in a warm oven, turning her over now and again "like a chicken," Kitto said.
"I can't see how that could be a good environment for a newborn," said Thomas Bader, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Bader has heard of the very occasional toilet birth, he said - usually in cases marked by obesity and unknown pregnancy - but he never imagined a response like Buffum's.
The child survived, of course - and then some. And for Kitto's 90th birthday, her daughter Jean Stewart decided to investigate the story she'd heard all her life.
Stewart and her husband, Rod, drew on census research and Ancestry.com to locate the home where her grandparents once were boarders.
They used a real estate database and Google Maps to confirm that the house was still standing; then, Jean Stewart sent a letter to the current occupants. Her mother was about to turn 90, she wrote, and she'd just thought of the perfect gift.
"It freaked me out at first," said Valerie Mazzuca, who bought the home with her husband last year. "Then I thought, 'Oh, that's so sweet.' If I was that age, I'd want to do the same thing."
A Californian for 88 years, Kitto delivered mail during World War II, traveled the globe with her husband, a Chevron executive who has since died, and saw the rise and fall of her family's cheese company. She spoke often of a desire to return to her birthplace.
She just never knew where to look.
Friday morning, as her taxi rumbled along Passyunk, Kitto grimaced at a graffiti-sprayed block.
