Crime on the Increase?

The record of crime in this country is without parallel. There is scarcely a newspaper from the most quiet retreats of the country to the most crowded and bustling thoroughfare of the city but is filled with sensational accounts of bloodshed and murder. No age, sex or condition are excepted. The bludgeon of the assassin falls alike on the innocent babe and the infirm octogenarian--the gentle and confiding maiden, wife or mother and the man of strong muscle and manhood.

...In Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Louisville, Cincinnati and almost every other city of the United States...assassins are on the warpath. The daily papers have each day reports of "Horrible Outrages," "Horrible Tragedies" and "Brutal Murders" until the heart sickens....

We are almost ready to believe that ninety-nine men out of a hundred are prepared to take human life. And whilst crime is so rampant in the land, its punishment is inadequate and uncertain. It is hard to convict a man with money and friends of the crime of murder, no matter how plain the proof. The courts furnish so many dodges such as emotional insanity, so that it is impossible to convict the most cold-blooded assassin.

No, the above opinion is not mine, and it's not even recent. It's from the Iron County (MO) Register in June of 1873. I've been saying for a long time that the rate of crime per capita is not that much worse nowadays than it was 100 or 150 years ago, and this editorial is just one more suggestion that I might be right. The one thing that is different I think, is that today's crimes sometimes involve multiple victims, whereas 100 years ago, it was rare for a killer to take the lives of more than one or two people at the same time.  

The immediate impetus for the Register's righteous indignation was an attempted murder that had recently happened in St. Louis. A man named Joseph Fore had tried to kill his wife, not out of rage or because he was drunk, but out of coldblooded, diabolical malice. 

It seems Fore had been acquitted of killing his brother-in-law a year earlier on the grounds of insanity. His wife stood by him during the trial, and, after his acquittal, she tried to reclaim him and their marriage. They moved to Kansas to start fresh, but Fore neglected his wife and spent most of his time in a saloon near their farm. Finally, she returned to St Louis, and he followed her. They met, and she told him she would go back to him and not carry through with the divorce she was seeking if he would promise to reform and give up intoxicating drinks. 

Instead, he took off for Mississippi, and Mrs. Fore took a job to support herself, since her husband would not. When he came back to St. Louis, he went to her place of employment, apparently angered by her independence, and struck her three times in the head with a hatchet. She fell to the ground insensible and bathed in blood. She was alive at the time of the Register's editorial, but her condition was critical. Fore was locked in the Four Corners Jail, where he was again "attempting the insanity dodge."  

The Death of Earl Anderson: Murder or Suicide?

On the evening of September 15, 1932, neighbors of 54-year-old Earl Williamson, a retired naval officer who lived on a farm near Silva in Wayne County, Missouri, heard the sound of a shotgun blast come from the direction of his home and immediately afterward heard a woman screaming. 

When neighbor Sheldon Ward arrived to investigate, he found Williamson lying on the ground in the back yard in critical condition from a shotgun wound. A shotgun and a hatchet were on the ground some distance away. Williamsson's 34-year-old wife, a "comely Ozarks woman," was in hysterics, saying that Earl had shot himself, and the injured man told neighbors that, yes, he alone was to blame. 

On the way to the hospital, however, Williamson told a local undertaker who was riding in the vehicle with him that "Sonny Boy," Williamson's nickname for his wife, did it but that he didn't want anyone to blame her. In addition, investigating authorities concluded that, taking into consideration the trajectory of the shot that wounded Williamson and the location of the shotgun, it would have been  impossible for him to have shot himself. 

After Williamson died the next day, a coroner's jury ruled that the death was not a suicide but rather a murder, and his wife, Edna, was indicted for first degree murder. 

A few weeks after Edna's arrest, an investigation into the background of Mr. and Mrs. Williamson determined that it was highly unlikely that they were legally married. Edna had produced a marriage certificate showing the couple had been married in West Virginia in 1930, but no record could be found of such a marriage in West Virginia records. In addition, the names of the minister and the witnesses listed on the certificate seemed to be made up, as no one by those names could be located. 

 

At Edna's trial at Greenville in February of 1933, the undertaker who accompanied Williamson to the hospital repeated his claim that the dying man said his wife had shot him, and the undertaker's assistant backed up the story. Edna, however, took the stand in her own defense to vehemently deny the charge against her. She said she was inside the house when she heard the shotgun blast, went to the door and hurried out to her husband when she saw him lying on the ground, and picked up the shotgun and heaved it as far as she could.  A neighbor of the Williamsons took the stand to bolster Edna's story, saying that Earl had told him when he first arrived on the scene that he shot himself. 

After a brief trial and a short deliberation, the jury came back with a verdict of not guilty. Upon hearing the verdict, Mrs. Williamson jumped up and shouted, "Glory to God!"

MURDER AND MAYHEM IN NORTHEAST OKLAHOMA

My next book is Murder and Mayhem in Northeast Oklahoma, which will be released in late October by The History Press, the same publisher that has also published several of my other books. Two of those previous books were Murder and Mayhem in Missouri and Murder and Mayhem in Southeast Kansas. So, the upcoming book is part of the Murder and Mayhem series.

I will be posting condensed accounts on this blog of some of the notorious characters and incidents covered in the book after it comes out. For now, though, I'll just mention some of the subjects covered without going into detail about any of them.

Among those subjects are the pre-Civil War feud between the Treaty Party of the Cherokee tribe and the Anti-Treaty Party of the same tribe that led to the murder of three members of the Treaty Party in 1839. Another chapter chronicles the Goingsnake Tragedy of 1872 that left 11 people dead. There's a chapter on notorious outlaw Henry Starr and a chapter on the infamous Tulsa Race Riot, more accurately called the Tulsa Race Massacre. Another chapter covers the Osage Murders, made infamous by the book Killers of the Flower Moon and the movie of the same name. There's a chapter about Pretty Boy Floyd and another about Bonnie and Clyde's killing of a law officer in Commerce, Oklahoma. The two most recent subjects covered in the book are the Girl Scout murders of the late 1970s and the Freeman-Bible murder case over twenty years later.

There a few others I did not mention above, but this will give you a taste of what the book is about. The book is available for pre-order directly from the publisher (Arcadia Publishing/The History Press) or from your favorite online super-duper bookstore https://amzn.to/4cPL3ZZ.

The Cole Younger-Frank James Wild West Show

In early 1903, shortly after Cole Younger had been pardoned by Minnesota authorities for his part in the 1876 Northfield bank robbery, a report leaked that he and Frank James were going into partnership to purchase an interest in Buckskin Bill's Wild West Show. Contacted in Kansas City in mid-February, James confirmed the purchase. 

James said the exhibition would be renamed the James-Younger Wild West Show, and he gave a few details about his and Younger's agreement with the previous owners. Val Hoffman, a wealthy brewer from Chicago, would retain part ownership in the show and H. E. Allott, the other seller, would be retained as general manager. 

James said he would act in certain parts of the show, such as rescuing a stagecoach, but he made it clear that the show would not depict any of his or Younger's outlaw escapades of yesteryear. He said that, after twenty years as an upstanding citizen, he was sick of being portrayed as an outlaw. However, he didn't see anything wrong with his being associated with a wild west show as such. He was only trying to provide for himself and his wife.

Contacted later the same day at his Lee's Summit home, Cole Younger confirmed that he had bought part interest in Buckskin Bill's Wild West Show, but he denied that Frank James was his partner. Instead, he said James's role would be merely that of a salaried employee. Specifically, James would be hired as the show's arena manager. 

Younger said that his role, in addition to being a co-owner with Hoffman, would be to serve as treasurer and to help manage the show. He would not be an actor in the show but would remain instead in the background. He would not appear in the arena at all.

The reason Younger emphasized that he would not have an acting role in the show was that one of the conditions of his Minnesota pardon was that he not "put himself on exhibition." He said he had agreed to such a stipulation but that he had not promised not to own or manage a show. 

Younger wanted it known that he planned to run a "clean" show, and that he would not allow gambling or drinking. "We will have the best show on the road," he bragged.

When Frank James was told what Cole Younger had said, he reiterated that he was indeed part owner of the wild west show, and he produced a legal document attesting to that fact. Apparently, James had met with the previous owners after Younger did and had agreed to his role as part owner at that time. 

There was some sentiment against James and Younger's wild west venture among their friends and acquaintances. They thought the two men should not remind the public of their outlaw days by associating themselves with a wild west show. 

Despite the second guessing, the James-Younger Wild West Show took to the road in early May 1903. Although it drew "good crowds of the morbidly curious" in the West, it was a failure in the East, "so much so that it got back west in a hurry." 

By September, Cole Younger was considering leaving the show because it was making no money. About the same time, he and James filed a suit against Hoffman for failing to properly equip the show and for refusing to drive away grifters and other riffraff. Hoffman countered by charging Younger with embezzlement in Vernon County, Missouri. 

Cole claimed there was no basis for the embezzlement charge and that it was brought only in retaliation for the suit he and James had filed. Indeed, the embezzlement charge was soon dismissed, and the two former outlaws severed ties with the wild west show. 

The Franklin Township War

In the early 1890s, all voters in Franklin Township of Greene County (MO) cast their ballots at John Sharp's general store in Hickory Barren. This changed in 1896, when a panel of county judges divided the township into two voting districts, with the residence of J. S. Palmer serving as the polling place in the southern part of the township and the residence of a man named Marks serving as the polling place in the northern part of the district.

The people around Hickory Barren did not like the change, but their resentment festered until about the first of June 1900, when Sharp and over 270 other residents of the Hickory Barren neighborhood signed a petition requesting that voting in Franklin Township once again be consolidated at Sharp's store. 

Why the township was divided into two voting districts in the first place is a matter of dispute. According to Sharp and his allies, the change resulted from a squabble within the Republican Party. Sharp claimed that the people of the township, with overwhelming support from the Hickory Barren area, had rejected the rule of the party bosses when F. M. Donnell (who hailed from the Hickory Barren area) was elected Greene County sheriff in 1895. However, Donnell was defeated in the Republican primary the following year, and the old party bosses, in an act of revenge, succeeded in splitting up the district and taking the polling place away from Hickory Barren. On the other hand, Judge A. B. Appleby, one of the men involved in the decision to split the township in two, claimed the decision was made merely to make it easier for citizens of the township to vote. Because Franklin was a large township, some citizens had to travel as far as 15 to 18 miles to vote when the only polling place was at Hickory Barren. 

The "Franklin Township war," as one Springfield newspaper called the dispute, came to a head on June 5, 1896, when the county court convened to consider the petition that Sharp and his allies had gathered. At the same time, a second group of voters, who opposed the petition and wanted to keep the two polling places as they had been for the past four years, filed a remonstrance that was signed by about 100 citizens of the township.

Some of the prominent signers of Sharp's petition were Gabe Alsup, H. L. Falin, J. A. Berry, and P. F. Headlee. 

Among those who signed the remonstrance opposing the petition were Judge Appleby, J. S. Palmer, W. P. Cook, Ben Alsup, and James Flannery. This opposition group suggested that Sharp had a monetary motive. They said he was actually more interested in securing customers for his store than in providing for the convenience of voters. They said that when the polling place was at Hickory Barren,  some people didn't get a chance to vote because Sharp had only enough room in his store for three voting booths. Sharp countered that the only reason some people might not have gotten a chance to vote was that too many of them waited until late in the day to attempt to vote, even though they were loafing at the store all day. If each man had voted as soon as he arrived at the polling place, there would have been no problem, Sharp said. He denied that he had a commercial motive in wanting the polling place returned to his store.

After a week's recess, the county court resumed the hearing on the dispute on June 12. Some of those who had filed the remonstrance against the petition testified before the judges, claiming that the petition did not represent the actual will of the people of the township. Anybody could take a sheet of paper and get a lot of people to sign their names to it. In fact, the remonstrators said, a number of men who had signed the petition had since stated that they wanted the voting places to stay unchanged, and they presented the judges with signed statements to that effect. 

After hearing all the testimony, the judges denied Sharp's petition, ruling instead that the voting places would remain where they currently were. Interviewed by a Springfield newspaper, Sharp complained that almost all the men testifying before the court were from the southern half of Franklin Township, whereas Hickory Barren was in the northern half. He also denied a claim made by the remonstrators that many of the prominent men of the Hickory Barren neighborhood, such as Captain Samuel W. Headlee, were present at the meeting in 1896 when the decision to divide the township was made.

Early Postal Route in Missouri

In researching my post about Pasco a couple of weeks ago, I ran onto several interesting items about early postal routes in Missouri. Because I was looking for information about Pasco at the time, the item that first caught my attention was an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in March 1854 that detailed, among other routes, the route between Lebanon and Springfield. 

The mail left Lebanon every Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. and traveled to Springfield by way of Long Lane, Buffalo, Shady Grove, Pasco, and Hickory Barren, arriving in Springfield by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday and covering a distance of 58 miles. Obviously, the mailman stayed overnight somewhere along the line, but the article did not say where.

After spending Tuesday night in Springfield, the mailman started back for Lebanon at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning, stopping at the same places he stopped on the way down. He arrived in Lebanon by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. What he did and where he stayed during his three-day hiatus between Thursday and Monday would be interesting to know, but the article also did not provide that tidbit. 

One of the things I find fascinating about this mail route is the fact that most of the towns where the mailman stopped have long ago faded into oblivion. Pasco, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, is just one example. In fact, Lebanon, Buffalo, and Springfield are about the only ones that haven't disappeared, or nearly so. 

Four years earlier, in February 1850, the mail route that ran northeast from Springfield was somewhat different. For one thing, Pasco did not yet have a post office, but the main difference was that the other terminus (besides Springfield) was Tuscumbia, not Lebanon. Another important difference was that the Tuscumbia route was considerably longer than the Lebanon route.

The mailman started from Tuscumbia in Miller County at 6:00 a.m. each Monday and traveled to Springfield by way of West Glaize, Dry Glaize, Wiota, Buffalo, Shady Grove, and Hickory Barren, arriving in Springfield by 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday and covering a distance of 103 miles. Notice that the mailman spent two nights on the road, instead of only one night that he would have to spend on the road four years later. 

After laying over in Springfield, the 1850 mailman started back for Tuscumbia at 6:00 a.m. Thursday morning and arrived at his destination by 6:00 p.m. Saturday. Presumably, he had to start all over again after just one day's rest. Not a job I would have enjoyed. 

J. E. Yandell and His Perpetual Motion Machine

Even as far back as the Middle Ages, would-be inventors started trying to come up with and claiming to have come up with a perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion is motion that continues forever without any outside force to keep it going. So, a perpetual motion machine would be a machine that generates its own power and keeps going infinitely. Such a machine, of course, is impossible, since it would violate the laws of thermodynamics, but that fact hasn't kept people from trying to invent such a device. One such individual was J. E. Yandell of Hickory Barren in Greene County, Missouri. 

The December 4, 1894, issue of the Springfield Democrat declared: "Perpetual motion has been accomplished at last, and in the next few months J. E. Yandell, a substantial farmer of Hickory Barrens, will rattle into Washington on a perpetual motion machine at the rate of 100 miles a minute and demand a patent from the government authorities." 

It seems Yandell had gone into the Greene County recorder of deeds office the day before requesting that some action be taken to protect his invention until he could get a patent on it from the federal government, because he feared that "someone might jump ahead of him and beat him to his patent." 

When the recorder informed Yandell that his office had no power in the matter, Yandell pulled out "a small infernal machine looking instrument made of clock wheels, etc." and sat it down on the table "under the recorder's nose." The recorder, "thinking his last days had come, calmly turned his eyes to heaven." 

Yandell rubbed one of the wheels hard against the table, and "the whole thing began action and sputtered around like a kettle of cod fish." 

That was all it did, however, and Yandell declined to explain any more details about his machine. Instead, he went to the county court and held a consultation with a judge who was said to be seriously considering giving Yandell the "necessary financial backing to bring the matter to a focus." 

Afterwards, Yandell submitted to a brief interview by the Democrat reporter. The newsman described Yandell as "an intelligent man of about 55 who does not appear to be a dreamer." 

Yandell said he could not give the details of his invention until he obtained the patent, but he said he had been studying mechanics for several years but had only recently perfected perpetual motion. He had taken one or two close friends into his confidence, and they were "certain that he had hit the bull's eye and would soon be a millionaire." 

Yandell claimed the device he'd shown the recorder was only a part of his machine and was, in fact, not even the most essential feature. He declared that his invention could indeed generate its own power and that it would revolutionize the world. He thought the machine would be able to run mills, factories, railroad or anything that required power, and he predicted it would take the place of steam and electricity. His only problem, he said, was that he was "handicapped for want of funds." 

The would-be inventor said that he would have an "iron model" completed within a couple of months and that it would weigh about 200 pounds. This machine would carry Yandell to Washington at a high rate of speed. It would have to have a track to run on, but he felt sure that arrangements could be made with the railroad companies to let him pass over their tracks. "The first power in my machine generates two other powers," Yandell declared, "and can bring into action still another if necessary."

Not surprisingly, Yandell's dream apparently didn't pan out, as the Springfield newspapers published no follow-up stories about it.