In the early morning hours of August 8, 1880, a young woman was murdered by her former husband near the small, peaceful town of Shutesbury, Massachusetts.
My 5th g-grandparents settled in Shutesbury. My 4th g-grandmother was born there. I even wrote about one interesting character who lived in Shutesbury, Ephraim Pratt, who claimed to live to be 116 years old. He was not exactly accurate about some things.
This was a sensational story. It was initially reported in print on August 9, 1880, in the Springfield, Massachusetts newspaper, The Republican. The editors of this newspaper spread this story over the Victorian Internet right away. This was, of course, by telegraph throughout the news distribution networks of the day.
I first read about the event in this article on the front page of the August 10, 1880, edition of a Sacramento, California newspaper.
Sacramento California newspaper, 10 Aug 1880.
This was printed the day after it was printed in the Springfield paper.
It turns out that there are several facts that are wrong.
A short list of the errors follows the cheesy doodle thingy.
The killer's birth record records his name as Nelson Jarvis Phelps, not Jarvis Nelson Phelps. Not important unless you know that his father's name is Jarvis Phelps.
The victim is listed as Sadie A Grover whose birth record says she's Sarah Ann Grover. That's not important in the context of the article, but her date of birth reveals another error.
The victim is said to be barely 19 years old. Her birth record shows that she's just 2 months past her 18th birthday.
The article says she's a former mistress. She's his second wife, the reason he was convicted of bigamy, and was now his former wife. Perhaps the reporter said she was his mistress because the marriage really wasn't valid. But there's a marriage record that confirms they were married on 19 Dec 1876.
He obviously lied about his other wife who he married on 11 Jul 1873. He apparently abandoned her and had several affairs before he married a second time. Neither had filed for divorce when he married a second time.
The statement that "Phelps has a wife living" is false. Both wives divorced him when he first went to prison on his bigamy conviction.
The 3 year old child listed in the article was born on 19 Sep 1877.
This shows that she was 14 years old when she married the killer and she was 15 years old when she gave birth to her child.
The child, by the way, was taken in by a related family and grew up in a sane environment. The child lived a long life and passed away long ago. I was unable to determine whether the child married or had children, so on the possibility that living descendents exist, I won't identify any of the kind folks who were willing to raise the child properly.
You don't get to choose your parents.
The doctors' who stated that they didn't expect the killer to live were shown to be wrong about that.
Nelson Jarvis Phelps died some 15 years after the murder on 3 Jul 1905 in the State Prison in Boston.
Other newspapers printed this report. Each introduced a factual error or two.
The story was picked up and published in the Perrysburg, Ohio newspaper. I included other reports that the paper included in its "sensational" column. As today, they seem to be compelled to report that some of the people are "colored". Notice that a guy who serious wounded two police officers was not instantly executed on site. He was taken into custody.
The Perrysburg report git the killer's name wrong. James rather than Jarvis.
It was picked up in Rock Island, Illinois.
In Rock Island, they report that she was "quite pretty and modest in appearance". This was never reported anywhere else (that I can find),definitely not included in the Springfield wire story. Apparently, it was important to the editor to embellish the evil nature of the crime.
And it's Turners Falls, not Turn's Falls.
It was so sensational that even the German language newspaper in Baltimore, Maryland picked it up.
Even without translation, I see that they got the name of the town wrong. Shrewsbury rather than Shutesbury. I've been asked if I really meant to say Shrewsbury often. Shutesbury isn't well-known even to some locals.
The American Statistical Society reported on the impending collapse of civilization and more gloom and doom in one of its 1893 publications. Then they go ahead and disprove these claims with actual statistics.
"after having criminal intercourse with her" was never reported anywhere. Other accounts say that he broke into her house, frightened her lover away, the forcefully dragged her into the woods and murdered her. Perhaps he raped her. Perhaps he didn't. My guess is that the statistician who wrote that was expressing his moral outrage about bigamy and unmarried women having sex with multiple partners. The Victorian Age, indeed.
The description of the folks living in the area as the usual northern "poor white trash" is especially offensive.
This attitude formed the seeds of the eugenics movement. Really. I'll tell you the story of the "Shutesbury Experiment" another time.