Fiend by Schechter Harold

Author:Schechter, Harold [Schechter, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Published: 2012-11-13T07:00:00+00:00

29

Six miners went into the mountains

To hunt for precious gold;

It was the middle of the winter,

The weather was dreadful cold.

Six miners went into the mountains

They had nor food nor shack—

Six miners went into the mountains,

But only one came back.

—“Ballad of Alfred Packer”

In the weeks preceding the start of Jesse’s trial, there was no shortage of lurid news to keep the public diverted—grisly accidents, ghastly crimes, a sensational case of frontier cannibalism, and the long-running sex scandal featuring America’s most popular man of the cloth, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher.

From Omaha came reports of a bizarre and bewildering tragedy—a devastating act of God inexplicably visited upon several of His most devout servants. According to the account in the New York Times—headlined “A CLERGYMAN AND HIS WIFE KILLED BY A THUNDERBOLT WHILE AT WORSHIP”—a Methodist minister named Richard S. Shreve had just seated himself at the dinner table, along with his wife and older brother, John, who was also a preacher. Outside the cozy refuge of the little house, a thunderstorm was brewing. The sky was “overcast with dark, angry clouds, and a few large, scattering drops of water had begun to fall.” Before partaking of their evening meal, the Reverend Shreve proposed that the little party join together in a family prayer. No sooner had he opened his Bible, however, than a “death-dealing” bolt of electricity exploded through the dining window and smote the seated trio. John Shreve eventually recovered, but his brother and sister-in-law were killed instantly—“furnishing one of the most startling exemplifications on record,” as the Times put it, “of the truth of the line in the Book of Common Prayer, to wit, ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ ”

News of another tragic accident—this one exemplifying the daily perils of nineteenth-century industrial labor—was reported from Vermont. A middle-aged factory worker named Elbridge Williams and his nineteen-year-old son, Edwin—“sober and industrious men,” according to the papers—were working together at the Cook Slate Works in Rutland when the younger of the pair, attempting to adjust the gear in the feeder of a slate planer, got his right hand caught in the moving cogs. When he shouted for help, his father dashed to his side. Instead of reversing the machinery, however, the elder Williams stuck his own right hand into the apparatus and attempted to pull his son free. “In doing this,” the papers reported, “his own hand became entangled, and both were slowly drawn in and crushed in the gear.” Hearing their screams, the factory foreman managed to stop the machine and freed the two men. Though both survived the accident, their mangled right hands had to be amputated—a catastrophic misfortune, since, as the papers reported, “father and son were the only means of support to a poor and worthy family.”

Infanticide was much in the news, particularly in New York City, where the sinister practice of “baby-farming” suddenly began to receive widespread attention after the suspicious death of a seventeen-day-old infant named Charles Corey. At the request of Dr.

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