The Ballad of Jacob Peck by Debra Komar

Author:Debra Komar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canadian Non-­‐Fiction, Amos Babcock, Shediac, New Brunswick, Mercy Hall, True Crime, Murder Mystery, Forensic Investigation
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: 2013-04-03T16:00:00+00:00

nisi prius [Latin, “unless before then”]

A system of judicial circuits in which judges are assigned for local trials of civil and criminal cases, to be presented before a jury.

Jurisprudent

1

Judge Joshua Upham was in a particularly foul mood. The Honourable Mr. Upham, Puisne Justice of the Supreme Court of New Brunswick, was trapped in his own private hell, though one not entirely of his own making. For the moment, that hell was his personal carriage, making the bone-rattling journey from his home in French Village, just west of Fredericton, to the courthouse in Dorchester, some one hundred and fifty miles to the east. Recent rains had reduced what normally passed for roads to rutted, impassable swamps. His new driver seemed hell-bent on destroying the carriage and the judge along with it. Upham, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, felt every lurch in his eroded joints.2

The carriage itself did not help matters. It was fine enough, a little tired and worn perhaps, but Upham felt his exalted post warranted some­thing a bit more genteel. He had seen much finer coaches throughout town, transporting men of far lesser import than himself. His carriage was symptomatic of the greater problem — namely, his salary. As a Supreme Court justice, albeit a junior one, Upham was entitled to a yearly stipend of £300 sterling, an outrageous pittance in his eyes.3 Although his salary was more than some yeomen saw in a lifetime — including that wastrel Babcock, the source of the judge’s current woes — Upham viewed it as a slap in the face, an insult to a man of his distinction, education, and ex­­pertise.

Upham was bred to expect more from life. Born in Brookfield, Mas­sachusetts, in 1741, Joshua was the favoured son of Dr. Jabez Upham, who practised medicine just outside Boston.4 Dr. Upham demanded the best education money could buy for his son. Joshua attended Harvard, graduating in 1763, although his degree had nothing to do with the law — Harvard would not open its school of law until 1817. Young Joshua was not brilliant but he was a hard worker, and Upham’s modest academic success was the result of application rather than aptitude. Although he did not exceed his father’s lofty expectations, Joshua managed neither to distinguish nor to embarrass himself.

With so much given, much was expected. The good doctor wanted his son to study medicine or law, and Joshua chose the latter. A career in jurisprudence suited Joshua’s regimented nature and lust for argument. After graduation, Upham began a study of the law in Brookfield. He even married Mary, the daughter of a judge: the Honourable John Murray of Rutland, Massachusetts. The future magistrate’s dreams were put on hold, however, with the start of the Revolutionary War. Upham sided with the Crown, fighting with the King’s American Dragoons. By the end of the war, he had made colonel. Joshua Upham had proven his mettle in battle, was a Harvard-educated man from a moneyed family, but for the first time in his young life, he found himself on the wrong side of a fight.

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